


Reconstruction

by aldersprig



Series: Reconstructed Wizarding World [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, M/M, Slavery, The Ministry of Magic (Harry Potter) is Terrible, Top Harry, renaming
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 09:21:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 21
Words: 41,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17041073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aldersprig/pseuds/aldersprig
Summary: The war is over, and yet Harry, Hermione, and Ron, Neville, Luna, and Ginny find they have another war on their hands.The Ministry is doing some awful things, all in the name of getting back their own from the Death Eaters and suspected Death Eaters.And one of those awful things is going to land the man once known as Draco Malfoy on Harry’s doorstep as his “probation-slave.”





	1. Imperius

If it hadn’t been for the eyes, Harry wouldn’t have recognized the man at his front door.

Held and chained between two Aurors — new ones, not personally known to Harry — he looked more like a scarecrow than a man. His hair was so dirty as to be a different color, dark and lank. The Azkaban uniform did nothing for him, making him look wan and sick. The heavy iron chains, the gaunt cheeks — there was only the faintest spark of his former rival in the man there.

_We’ve decided to give you the younger Malfoy._ The Head of Reconstruction, a former Gryffindor Harry barely recognized, had looked tired and clearly been braced for a fight. _Because, quite frankly, we can’t trust his life with many other people. You might have been happier with —_ __

__Harry had stopped him there, not wanting to know who the head of thought he’d be better pleased with. An older Slytherin girl? One of the female Death Eaters themselves?

_I’m happy to do whatever the Department and the Ministry need from me._ He’d been saying that a lot lately. He wondered when he would finally stop saying it.

The leftmost Auror, nearly as ginger as the Weasleys, cleared his throat. “Mr. Potter, this is the prisoner-slave sent to you by Ministry Resolution Seven-Twelve. There are-” He looked around as if worried that the neighbors would see them.

“Fidelus Charm,” Harry sighed. The neighbors weren’t going to see anything. They had to know that; someone had to have told them where the house was. “But come on in. There are-”

The other Auror, shorter, female, and muscular, with four visible scars even in her auror robes, shoved forward a set of golden jewelry in her off hand. “You have to put them on him. The magic will attune to the person who installs, err, puts it on, err, who locks the jewelry on the prisoner-slave.”

Harry gestured them into the house. It was still a mess, but he wasn’t particularly in the mood to impress anyone. “He has a name, you know.”

“Well, uh,” the taller one cleared his throat. “That is. Technically, he doesn’t. That’s part of the terms of the urm, probation.”

“Probation.” The word left a bad taste in Harry’s mouth. “Slavery.”

He’d argued with Heathcote O’Flaherty — the Head of Reconstruction — about this idea for months before, advised by Hermione that there were bigger battles left to fight and pushed by Ron to drop it, he’d gone back to _I’m happy to do whatever the department and the ministry need from me._

__“Probation-Slavery,” the shorter Auror agreed. She held the - slavery-pieces? Jewelry? Chains? The _things_ out to Harry. 

Harry took them but didn’t look at them. He’d already done some reading - mostly he’d done just enough reading to be able to understand when Hermione did all the reading and explained it to him - and he knew how the things worked. And then the Head of Reconstruction had explained it to him again. 

He looked at the prisoner instead. The last time he’d seen the man, he’d been speaking for Draco and Narcissa at their trials. He’d done everything he could. And he’d ended up.... Doing this for him, not exactly his best idea, but he’d been running out of other ideas and Hermione’d been up to her elbows in things she needed to get done. 

Draco didn’t look at him. He hadn’t looked at anyone or said anything since he and his jailors arrived here. He was silent, not sneering, no real expression at all. Harry was struck again at how much _not_ like himself he looked. 

He cleared his throat and looked down at the things in his hands. The one was a collar, that much was obvious. And then there was - bracelets? 

“They will bind his will to yours,” the shorter Auror explained. “It’s not the Imperius curse-”

_It’s not the Imperius curse._ The Head of Reconstruction had been very clear on that. Harry had been shouting at him; the man had responded with a snappish voice, standing up to show off how much taller than Harry he was. _We are NOT performing Unspeakable Curses on the prisoners and I resent the implication that we might_.

_Of course._ The taste in Harry’s mouth had been awful that day. _You’re just making sure their owners - pardon me, minders - can tell them to do whatever they need to. Want to_.

After that little tantrum, he’d been a bit surprised that the man had sent him a probation-prisoner-slave after all. He supposed they needed the good PR of the Boy Who Lived buying in to their gross program.

And he — well. _We can’t trust his life with many other people._

He’d already seen Pansy Parkinson at the Burrow. He’d seen Theodore Nott placed with the remainders of the Diggory family. He wasn’t going to say no, not when the Department of Reconstruction had been known to turn on even its golden children.

_We need them._ Hermione kept trying to hammer the message home. _And we know what happens when we get on the wrong side of the Ministry._

__So he’d stopped yelling. He’d lent his name and his face to the Reconstruction efforts. He’d added as much input to the projects as they would allow him, and when Ron could be convinced, he seeded the input through his friend instead.

Meanwhile, they’d plotted Ron’s and Neville’s Ministry careers - and Percy’s, now - aimed Hermione’s further education, and planned out Harry and Ginny’s social engagements like they were strategizing for another war. They even did their best to plot Luna’s trips, although that was like herding cats on a good day and like catching fog in a net on a bad. They’d all continued to work with the Department of Reconstruction as much as they could stand, as that Department doled out those who’d found themselves on the wrong side of the war who were deemed too guilty for fines or house arrest and yet too innocent for Azkaban. 

They were braced for anything. Somehow, that still didn’t make this any easier. 

“It doesn’t actually make them do exactly what you say, nothing like that,” the shorter Auror continued.

“I know.” Harry gestured them past the entryway. “It binds their magic and their - his location to me. I helped design them,” he added. His mouth tasted like ashes. “Here, sit him down here.” He gestured into the sitting room, to a chair that, despite Molly Weasley’s best efforts, probably would not look dirtier for the filthiness of the prisoner’s uniform. “You don’t have to hold him like that. I don’t think he’s going to make a run for it.”

“Others have tried.” The taller Auror’s tone was meant, Harry thought, to sound ominous. Instead, it merely sounded pompous. 

“You don’t have to hold him, still,” Harry repeated. “I don’t think he can walk without help right now.”

Indeed, the prisoner was limp in the chair. With clear reluctance, both Aurors took a step backwards, leaving Harry to the pieces of adornment, such as they were, in his hands. 

“Malfoy.” He cleared his throat. “Are you-”

“Don’t call me that.” The man’s voice was rough, as if he hadn’t used it in quite some time. “That’s not my name anymore.”

What had they _done_ to him? “Dra-”

“Anything but that.” He sounded terrified. 

“All right. Hold out your arms, then.” He was going to have to figure out what to call the man eventually. He didn’t think he’d appreciate _ferret_. 

As if what his _prisoner-slave_ appreciated was the important thing. 

The man held out his arms, the heavy chains jangling. 

“Those don’t come off until the other ones come on,” the ginger Auror explained. Harry huffed and pushed the shackles closer to the man’s hands, giving him a clear view of chafed, abraded, bloody wrists. 

He winced as he locked the golden cuffs on. They were lightweight, thin, decorative-looking. They were meant, or so he’d been told, to be a less cruel sort of thing. But they still bound his prisoner’s will and magic to his own. 

And then, moving aside limp hair that had grown past the man’s neck, the collar, a match to the cuffs and layered in runes, glowing with magic as Harry locked it closed. 

With a noise like approval, the shorter Auror took off the heavy iron chains. “You be sure to get back your own on this one,” she told Harry. “I lost a sister at the Battle of Hogwarts, you know.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.” He was getting really good at saying that without it sounding hollow. “Thank you for your service, and thank you for bringing him to me. I’ll walk you out-”

“No need.” The ginger Auror didn’t seem to like him. “We’ll see ourselves out. You get started on this one. We won’t be here to see it.”

“Thank you,” Harry repeated. He walked them halfway anyway, not liking people stomping around his house, even if barely _was_ his house. “Thanks for bringing him to me.”


	2. Bullesco de Calgonio

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco - Well, the person formerly known as Draco - gets a bath. Obviously, this chapter involves nudity. Suggestions of past abuse are also visible on this nudity.

When the Aurors had been seen out and the door had closed itself behind them, Harry turned back towards the sitting room, only to find that his pris - that  _ Malfoy  _  had followed him, unsteady on his feet but still standing.

He took a moment to look at the man.  He was too skinny, he was sickly-looking, and he had visible welts on most of the skin that the uniform didn’t cover.  “All right. We’re going upstairs. What am I going to call you, then, if not by your name?”

“You heard them.  I don’t have a name anymore.”

“I heard them say a bunch of stupid shit.  Can you walk?” Since the man didn’t want him to use his name, Harry figure he could respect that, at least.  “I mean, obviously you can walk. Can you manage the stairs?”

“Graduation has not made you any brighter, I see.”  A flash of the old rancor seemed to light up Draco’s face as he smirked at Harry.  “I can make it up a lot more than a set of stairs. The question is, what’s at the top of them?”

“A bath.”

“I can’t heat the water, you know.  They took my - well, it wasn’t mine, anyway.”

Harry felt a twinge of guilt.   _ He _ had taken Draco’s proper wand.  Tomorrow. He’d get him a new wand tomorrow.  Or soon, at least. “I’m not going to expose you to the resident House-elf until you’re feeling a bit more yourself.  I guess that means I’m going to heat your bath for you.”

“As you wish.”  There was a flinch to the man’s voice that Harry tried not to think about and a slight cringe to his shoulders.  “Up the stairs, you said?”

“These stairs, yeah.  It’s quicker than the back stairs.”  Harry generally preferred the back stairs - they were less gruesome, less likely to end with a portrait yelling at him, and less exposed-feeling.  But for all his claims, his current guest did not look up to circumnavigating the house only to then go up a set of stairs. 

Harry gestured Draco up and followed close behind him, ready to catch if the man faltered.  “I can’t just call you  _ hey you _ .”  

“Were you not paying attention, Potter?”  Draco did not halt his slow but steady progress up the stairs.  “I belong to you. I am entirely and completely in your power. You put the damn collar on me.  You can call me whatever you want.”

“Well, then.”  Harry struggled, as he always had, to control his temper at the disdain.  He could handle many things, but  _ disdain _ did bad things to his self-control.  “I don’t  _ want _ to call you  _ hey you _ , and you don’t want me to use your proper name.”

“ _ They took it from me _ .”  This time, Draco - no.   _ The man _ stopped on the stairs.  “They took it, all right?  It’s not to be mine again until I’ve ‘paid my debt to society.’  And they made it quite… quite clear that I am not to answer to either of those names.  So no. You may not call me by the name of the Heir of my father’s former empire.”

He began his slow progress upward again.   A moment later, without turning back, he asked, “what’s ‘the resident house-elf’ named?”

“Kreacher.”  Harry wrinkled his nose, although Dr- the person in front of him couldn’t see it.

He froze anyway.  “…Oh.” He seemed to look around him for the first time.  Then, as if shaking himself. “Then I suppose you ought to call me after some creature or another.  Houses have a sort of naming theme.”

“You’re not a house-elf!”

“No.”  The next step up the stairs looked painfully deliberate.  “But I belong to your house now. And I’d rather not be called  _ Joe _ or some stupid muggle name.”

Harry let the man get up several stairs in silence.  “Then I guess for tonight I’ll call you puppy,” he answered, although it didn’t feel either right or kind.

The man’s shoulders twitched.  “ _ Puppy?” _  He actually turned to look at Harry at that one, one eyebrow - smudge with dirt and bruised - raised in disbelief.  “Puppy?”

“Kitten, then.  Not as a long-term name, but because I don’t feel like doing research while you so clearly need a bath, a change of clothes, and a meal.”

“Kitten.”  The man’s mouth worked a few times.  “For a bath, food, and something other than this horrid uniform, I can be  _ Kitten,  _ I suppose.  But I don’t even get to be a full-grown animal?’

“Not in the bath, you don’t.  You’d make a mess.” Now what had inspired him to say something so ridiculous?  “Come on, three more stairs and then my room is at the end of the hall. It’s got the best bathroom,” he explained, “and most of the rest of the house still needs quite a bit of… help.”

The - the  _ Kitten _ looked around. “I can see that.  How long have you been squatting here?”

“Sirius left if it to me!  I mean…” He cleared his throat uncomfortably.  “Just a few months. I couldn’t stay living with the Weasleys forever.”

“I can’t see why not.  Oh. Hrrmph. Haven’t even taken the master suite, have you?  No wonder the house is a mess. But if there’s a proper bath…”  He trailed off. “That is. Uh.” He cleared his throat and said nothing else.

“This way.”  Harry slid around him and opened his bedroom door.  Suddenly it struck him -  _ Draco Malfoy was about to be in his bedroom _ .

No.

No.  It was his turn to clear his throat.  The prisoner-slave  _ Kitten _ \- he really had to come up with a better name - was about to be in his bedroom.  Which, from the contract he’d signed at the Ministry, was to be expected - and possibly why they’d expected him to want a female prisoner-slave.  He was, after all, in a well-known relationship with Ginny, a relationship that was a bit more public than either of them had originally planned on.  Clearly, he was interested in women.

“It’s, uh.” His suite  - and the back stairs leading to it - were the parts of the house that he kept scrupulously tidy. Because he was not going to invite Ginny here if it was going to be a mess.  And because he, for the first time in his life, could say that these places were unequivocally  _ his _ . 

The duvet was thick and warm and a sage green that Ginny looked beautiful sprawled out on top of.  The pillows - there were so many of them, because he’d gone a bit nuts shopping. The chests he kept tidy, the walls were covered in hangings, and the window he’d bribed Hermione to spell, so that it showed the back yard but none of the neighboring houses, as if 12 Grimmauld Lane were alone in a wide meadow.   There was a carpet on the floor that he had bought in a muggle store, the colors the same as the hangings. It was soft enough to lie on, and on very bad night, he would drag some pillows onto the floor and sleep in front of the fireplace. 

His prisoner had stopped a couple steps into the room.  “Potter, there must be some mistake,” he drawled. “This can’t be your room; it doesn’t look like a disaster crossed with a tent.”

“I know.”  Harry snorted.  “Bathroom’s to your left.  I keep telling people that the mess was Ron, but nobody believed me — well, Hermione believes me now.”

Of course, Draco had never seen inside one of Harry’s bedrooms before, but that wasn’t the point, was it?  He was just trying to give Harry trouble, and Harry was not going to squash his Kitten having a spark of personality. 

The man headed into the bathroom and stood, looking at the tub.  “I can’t,” he repeated. “I don’t have a wand. You haven’t told me I can.”

“If you had a wand-”  Harry stopped himself.  Did he want to ask that question?  He took a moment to start the tub filling with a spell and, after a second’s thought, added another spell for a bit of bubble-bath to fill the giant claw-footed monstrosity with wild bubbles.  Like in TV shows he’d watched when the Dursleys had thought he was out of the room, the bubbles ought to give Dra - Kitten some modesty. Yes. He wanted to see what would happen. “-How long would it take for you to hex me?”

“I thought you said you knew how these things worked, Potter.  If I cause you pain, it comes back on me. If I disobey you, it comes back on me.  If I use my magic in a way you don’t like, pfft, there goes my magic.”

“…What?”  Harry stared at the man.  His prisoner stared back at him, unrepentant.  “Shit. That is not - what else? Here, I’m going to turn my back.  You can take off those rags and get in the tub.”

“I don’t need your permission to  _ bathe _ , Potter.”  Still, Harry could hear the sounds of the Azkaban uniform dropping to the ground, the sounds of the prisoner struggling into the tub.  He resisted the urge to turn around, to help. Give the man that much privacy. Give him  _ something _ .  “They didn’t give me a scroll to go with it or anything, just the highlights.  If I disobey, it hurts me.”

“That isn’t what-!”    

“Isn’t what  _ what,  _ Potter?” The man flapped a hand at him, just visible out of the corner of Harry’s eye.  “Look. Look, they told me that much, they made it damn clear that the thing would hurt me if I wasn’t a good slave, and that’s about it.”

“I-”  Harry Transfigured a towel into a stool.  Because he didn’t care all that much, it looked mostly like a towel draped over an invisible box, but it would hold his weight. “Shit.  That is  _ not _ what they told us it would do.”

“Little too late, isn’t it?”  Drac - Kitten reached up and ran his hands through his hair.  “Anyway, like I said. If I hexed you, if I slapped you, if I stick out my foot and trip you, I’m going to feel everything you feel.”

“Might be fun for a sado-masochist,” Harry muttered, before he remembered he couldn’t just  _ joke  _ like this, he might be in charge of the man but they definitely weren’t  _ friends _ .

From the surprised look on his prisoner’s face, that had not been anything he’d been expecting.  Harry got to see it for only a moment before the expression - and the filthy hair - disappeared beneath the bubbles. Harry was almost holding his breath by the time the pointed nose resurfaced. 

“Urgh.  This water is a swamp already.  But the bubbles.” He wiped a bubble off of his nose.  “What did you do? Some sort of muggle mess? It smells… It smells nice.”

_ “Bullesco de Calgonio.   _ It’s, ah, it’s based on a muggle product, but it adds a soothing oil and a lavender smell to bath water, and then it washes off pretty much clean.” 

The man’s eyes narrowed.  “I don’t recognize that spell.”

“Oh. Well.  Ah. It was one of the first things Hermione and I worked out.  We figured, bubble bath, we weren’t going to hurt anything experimenting with that.” 

His prisoner-guest was staring at him.  “You  _ worked out _ a spell?”

“We’ve worked out three now.  Well, two and a half.” He brushed aside the work they still had to do on the improved shield spell.  “The second one is an improved levitation spell.” He quirked his lips, although he doubted his guest would get the joke.  “Okay, why don’t you shampoo your hair first and then I’ll drain the tub and refill it?”

“I  _ do _ know how to bathe myself, you know.  I didn’t forget that in the brief time I was in Azkaban.”

“I figured you always had a house-elf to do it for you,” Harry quipped back.  “You know, bathe you, dress you, shake your wang after you took a piss-”

He’d gone too far; he could tell from the tight look on his guest’s face.  “I think I can manage the rest myself, thank you.” His voice was tight and his face had shut down in a way that Harry had never seen.  

“Of course.”  He stood but left the stool.  “I’ll be just out there finding something for you to wear.”  

He was at the door when he heard a muffled noise.  He turned quickly enough to catch a grimace on his guest’s face, arms halfway up towards his hair. 

“Oh, go  _ away _ , Potter,” he huffed.  “I don’t need someone seeing what a  _ wreck _ I am, all right?”

“No.”  Harry re-crossed the bathroom, dragging his makeshift stool right to the edge of the tub.  “Shoulders?”

“Mostly my left,” his guest admitted.  “But my right arm won’t lift properly either.  Probably something those brutes did to me, but I can’t imagine anyone cares.”

Harry reached for the shampoo.  “I’ll get a healer in or see about a potion.   _ I _ care,” he added, a bit too fiercely; his guest shifted away from him.  “I agreed to take care of you.”

His prisoner scooted further away.  “You agreed to  _ own _ me.  As your slave.”

“As a member of my house, under my responsibility.  I know you hate me and everything House Potter might stand for, but-”

“You know nothing about me, Potter.”

The sneer was back.  For the first time in his life, Harry took that as a good sign.  

“I know your hair is a wreck and your shoulders are shot.  If you come here, I’ll wash it for you.”

Slowly, the man scooted back towards him. Harry let out a breath and began massaging the shampoo through the once-platinum hair.  Even more slowly than he had moved, his guest allowed himself to relax. 

“You’ve got a good touch with that.”

“Quidditch,” Harry explained lightly.  And then, realizing as his guest opened one eye that it wasn’t an explanation at all, “Sometimes Gin will be so sore after practice that the tub - and that oil - are all she wants.  So I do her hair.”

“Ah.  The sainted daughter of weas… Weasleys.  Still, then?”

Harry figured there probably hadn't been many newspapers in Azkaban.  “Still,” he agreed. He continued his work massaging his guest’s scalp.  “She's playing for the Holyhead Harpies.”

“A proper team.”  He sounded impressed despite himself.  “And you?”

“Me?”  Harry dunked his hands in the water and came up not much cleaner than they’d gone in.  He went back to massaging his guest’s scalp for a moment longer, just to give himself something to do with his hands while he thought.  “This and that. Helping out. Putting stuff back together.”

“Idle rich, then.  Never would have thought it of you, Potter.”

“Unemployed, at least.  Not so sure about idle. Or rich.”  Harry shrugged. “Okay, I’m going to drain the tub and do a full rinse so you can soak in clean water. Cleaner, at least.  Ready?”

“It’s not as if I have to move or anything.”  He made one of those faces that had made Harry so want to punch him in years previous. 

“Depends on if you want to, uh, cover yourself or not.”  Harry began to drain the tub with a flick of his wand. “Because otherwise, once those bubbles are gone…”

“Potter.”  There was a catch in the man’s voice.  “I don’t know if you missed this point in all the stupidity that was those two aurors, but you  _ own _ me for the foreseeable future.  If you want to see me naked, you are going to see me naked.  I don’t have a whole lot of say in the matter.   Besides.”  The chuckle sounded forced.  “Don’t you want to see what you bought?”

Harry swallowed down a surge of anger.  "I don't want to - I don't want - I don't want anything you don't want, Draco."

"Oh, good, then I'll go home now and charm off this awful jewelry and all will be right with the world again."

Harry sputtered, his hands stalling in their work, and huffed.  "That's not-"

"Oh, relax, Potter - and don't call me that name, if you don't mind.  It hurts. But relax. I'm not going to hare off to the manor; the jewelry, I've been told only comes off with a Ministry key, so that's not going to happen.  The rest, well." He smirked, looking almost normal. "I'm not ashamed of what I have. Are you ashamed to look at it?"

"No!  No, of course not... damnit."  Draco had, once again, backed him into a corner.  "Fine." He started a warm-water spell. "If you tilt your head back, you won't get water in your eyes."

Draco obliged and Harry let t he water rinse him off, clearing the shampoo off his hair, leaving it almost the proper color.  It still looked a little dingy, more dishwater than platinum, but it no longer looked as if he had rubbed his hair in dungeon dirt.

The rest of him... was pale and cleaner, Harry could say that much.  He was underfed in a way that made Harry's stomach ache in remembered hunger, but there were signs that he had been working out before his imprisonment.  Old scars crossed his chest, as well as new welts and bruises. The area around his left shoulder looked inflamed. 

He was mostly flaccid, thank Merlin, although he began to perk up at the attention.  Some childish part of Harry gave a good look; he barely resisted snickering and slammed up his Occlumency shields.  In that, as in far too many things, they were almost perfectly matched.

The rinsing complete, he plugged the tub again and did a second run of warm water and soothing (covering) bubbles.  Once the water was flowing, he glanced at his guest's face. 

Draco looked strangely vulnerable.  “Thanks, Potter,” he muttered. 

“Quite all right.  Okay, I'm going to give you some time while I do something about clothes.  And maybe dinner. Shout if you need me, all right?”

“I'm sure I can manage.”


	3. Three: Diffindo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one formerly known as Draco is in the bath, alone, with a wand. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

It was the work of just a couple minutes to transfigure a pair of his joggers, a t-shirt, and a spare robe into things that would be long enough for Malfoy (who had several inches on Harry in all but the more important way) and, more importantly to Harry, be soft enough not to rub or chafe all the raw marks and bruises Malfoy was sporting.  He carried them back into the bathroom and draped them over the towel-stool.

Malfoy -  _ Kitten _ , he was either going to have to come up with a better name fast or get used to calling the man a small fluffy feline - was up to his nose in the bubbles with his eyes closed.  Harry considered him for a moment before he cleared his throat.

To his credit, the man didn’t jump.  “I knew you were there,” he complained.  “What can I do for your lordship?”

Harry put his wand carefully on the side of the tub. “I’m going to start dinner.  If you need anything, you can send a spark down or something similar. Unless you know a specific messenger spell, in which case, I’d love to know it.”

“Nothing but the short-range version of a Howler,” the Kitten admitted.  He eyed the wand as if expecting it to leap out and bite him. “You’re leaving me with your wand?”

“I don’t need it to cook dinner.  I learned to cook the Muggle way,” he explained.  “And you might need it to rinse yourself off. Or to send me a message.”

“But you’re leaving me.  With your wand.”

“I know it won’t work as well as your own, but — but it will do for tonight, okay?  If you finish with your bath before I finish making dinner, these are for you.” He patted the clothes.  “They’re muggle clothes, but I think they’ll suit you better than one of my robes.”

Dr - the Kitten eyed the pile of clothes.  “Anything’s better than that uniform. I might _Incendio_ the bloody thing.”

“I wouldn’t blame you one bit.  I’ll see you downstairs.”

Harry had some misgivings, of course, leaving a man who had been his nemesis alone with his wand. However, if he was going to do this - was going to have someone who had once been Draco Malfoy living in his house, eating his food and working with him - he was going to have to start with a show of trust somewhere. 

_ You smile even when you’re angry, Harry.  That’s how you start hiding your cards. Honestly, Occlumency means nothing at all if you can’t conceal what you’re feeling _ .

This current battle was being fought in ballrooms and tea parties, and once again Harry found himself having to learn a new set of skills.

Hermione had been among those teaching him politics, mostly as she learned them herself from various books.  Andromeda Tonks, too, Percy - now that had been a surprising source - and even Luna had been educating Harry on what to do. 

He could manage to hide his misgivings from one prat of a former Death-Eater-sympathizer who happened to be be both naked in his bathtub and locked into a contract with Harry.

Even if part of him  _ did _  think he was being absolutely batty. 

As he hit the bottom of the back stairs, a query brushed across his mind.   _ Lumos? _

THIS part of the collar’s functionality, he already knew.  Hermione had wanted to have it accompanied by a visual of “approve” and “no way” buttons, but the consensus had been that it would confuse non-muggle-raised wizards.

He sent a thread of agreement back along the thin connection.  Yes, Draco - Kitten, damnit, if the man was actually  _ admitting _ that it hurt, it was probably pretty damn unpleasant, and he was going to have to work on a better name and  _ not _ calling him the D-word. 

The _ Houseguest Who Shall Not Be Named. _  Harry didn't laugh, but he allowed himself a smirk. 

He didn't need to be told about more  _ lumos _ , so it was a few minutes before the spell-link connected him again. He was pulling out ingredients from the icebox.  From what he had, he could pull off a pretty good soup. It might be better with a couple magical shortcuts, but he could always do those later. 

_ Accio? _ the spell asked him, and again, Harry sent back a blanket approval.  Another basic spell and another one touched his mind, the first one while he was chopping the onions and the second one while they were sauteing. 

The general sense he got coming down the thin connection was that his guest-without-a-name was testing out how the wand would work for him.  It was a good idea.  _ The wand chooses the wizard _ , after all, and this wand hadn't chosen Draco at all. 

He got the carrots and celery chopped and tossed into the pan while he considered the Grimmauld Place wine cellar.  He could call Kreacher, but - well, that was its own problem. 

This one.  He thought this one would-

_ Diffindo? _

Idly, he sent approval up the thread.  Draco was -

"No!"  Harry shoved the pot to a cold burner and ran up the stairs two at a time.  "Blast it, no, no, what the  _ hell _ , no!"

Diffindo was the  _ severing charm.  _

He had left someone in a dark mood and an untenable position alone in a bathtub with a wand.  He couldn't even  _ think _ of the last time he'd been so stupid.

He barrelled up the stairs, literally hurdling Kreacher when the house-elf decided that he needed to be in the  _ middle of the stairway _ for no good reason, muttering  _ no, fuck, no _ .  How bad - the mental link said  _ diffindo?  _ again and he said  _ no, _ spat it out out loud, "No!"

The bathroom door wasn't locked.  He skidded into the room, tripped on the floor mat, and landed on the tile on his bum.

He'd had worse landings, and when he'd fallen, he'd seen the red in the tub.  Harry rolled up to his feet. "Dr - Kitten! No! Blast it-"

Draco's left arm was propped against the edge of the tub.  Blood dripped from his forearm, more blood than made any sense.  It coated his arm, completely covering - 

_ completely covering where the Dark Mark had been _ . 

"Shit," Harry muttered.  "Shit." He took his wand from Draco's unresisting fingers and cast  _ Aguamenti  _ to wash off the wound.

"It's still cursed," his guest muttered. "I could, I could cut off the arm and the damn curse would still be there.  But I had to  _ try _ .  He's dead.  he's really dead, isn't he?"

"He's really dead," Harry assured him.  "I'm going to heal this now."

There was something very appropriate about using _Vulnera Sanentur_ to heal Draco, the only person he'd ever used the healing spell's paired curse on.  He sang the incantation quietly, wishing - not for the first time - that he had a better singing voice. 

"If you're going to kill me, Potter, you don't have to do it with that croak of a voice."

It appeared his Kitten had the same opinion. 

Harry aimed his wand at the wound and pressed his will through it.  The wound closed up, the Dark Mark there again - except one segment of the snake, which was gone.

Harry and Draco both stared at the Mark.  Draco looked at Harry and back at the Mark.

Draco grabbed for the wand.  "Give it to me! Give it to me I'm going to carve the damn thing-"

Harry moved the wand away without trouble.  "No. No, Dr- Kitten. Sit down, come on. Look."  He put his free hand on Draco's shoulder, ignoring, trying to ignore, that this was  _ Malfoy _ in his tub bleeding in his water.  "Look. We'll research it. We'll get Hermione on it.  We'll figure out what it was, if it was the severing charm or the - or  _ Snape's _ healing charm or the combination of the two.  We'll get it gone. Now that we know that we can hurt the Mark, I promise you, we'll get it off of you.  Okay? But let's get you clean and get food into you first."

Draco stared at him.  "You mean it. You really mean - you mean you'll help me.  You'll  _ research _ me," he added, his lips twisting, "but you want to  _ help.   _ Do you help everyone, Saint Potter?"

"I can't help  _ everyone.  _ I mean," he smirked, hoping Draco would realize it was a joke, "unless you count killing Voldemort as helping everyone."  He let his expression go serious. "But really. I didn't do that alone. I don't do any of it alone."

"But you'll still help me.  Will Granger?"

"You already said it."  Now he could smile, fondly, because he knew Hermione and how she ticked.  "She'll  _ research _ you."


	4. Sanctum Sanctorum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry's Kitten turns out to have some useful information, after all, and soup is had.

It took only a couple minutes to get The Guest Formerly Known as Draco out of the tub.  It was a testament to how shaken he really was that the Kitten didn’t complain at all about the Muggle clothing that Harry had provided - he even said thank you, albeit very  quietly, as he slipped on the soft t-shirt over his abraded chest. 

“I’ve got to get down to the kitchen and finish making dinner if we’re eating today.  You’re welcome to join me,” Harry offered, once the Kitten was dressed. 

That got one of those aristocratic eyebrows lifted.  “You’re really making your own meal.  I thought you had a house-elf.”

“I do.  But, well, it turns out I like cooking.”  Even as he said it, a thought occurred to Harry.  He was pretty sure Hermione would drag him over the coals for it, but  _ Hermione _ didn’t have to live with Kreacher.   “As a matter of fact… so the resident house-elf spent too long here alone.”  That was the nice way to put it. “And he needs — uh. Anyway. Part of your job as my —”

“You can say  _ slave _ , Potter, I won’t melt.  I could’ve taken the Azkaban sentence instead.  Part of my job as your  _ slave _ …?”

“Part of your job as my slave—” He didn’t choke on the word, but it brought up unfortunate thoughts — “Is going to be to—” what was the word?  Hermione loved this one. “To  _ liaise _ with the resident house-elf.  I want to know what he needs to be, uh, happier, and to be more productive.”

“Why me?”  He looked skeptical rather than angry.  “Surely you could talk to him.”

“Because  _ you _ are the descendant of the Blacks and you were raised in a pure-bl—” he stopped himself as the Kitten winced — “in an old wizarding family.”

“And you  _ Own  _ this house and everything in it. And are a scion of the house of Potter.”

“And was raised by Muggles.  I could ask Neville to do it, but he’s a little bit busy with the whole Auror business.  Ron and Gin are no help with this, and clearly Hermione isn’t either. And Luna—”

“You were raised by  _ Muggles _ ?  The savior of the wizarding world, the boy who lived, you were raised by  _ Muggles _ ?”

“Raised is probably too strong a word,” he muttered.  “Housed and fed. More or less. Look. Can you do it?”

“Of course I can.  But seriously — oh, fuck Dumbledore and—” he blanched.

“No, no, I don’t think it was a great idea either.  Come on, you can make it down the stairs, right?”

“Oddly, I’m feeling much better. Possibly not being around two Aurors who both hate me and kept testing me by saying the name I used to have.”

“They did - of course they did.”  Harry growled. “There are a lot of decent folks in the Auror department, but the ones that are tied to the Department of Reconstruction, I swear…”  He led the way down the back stairs. “You noticed the house still looks a mess.”

“Because you were raised by Muggles and don’t know what a broom looks like?”

“Seriously?”  Harry turned to raise an eyebrow at his guest, only to find the man far closer than he’d expected, which put his raised eyebrow around the man’s chest.  “Do you? Other than for flying?”

“Well, I imagine… Oh, rubbish.  You don’t know how to tell a House Elf what to do, at least, is that part right?”

“It’s not just that.  I do know how to clean the Muggle way, and I’ve done it, and I’ve used cleaning spells — let me tell you, those would’ve made my life back in my aunt and uncle’s place a lot easier — and most of the house, it just doesn’t stay clean.   I know that someone who grew up like you probably doesn’t do a lot of cleaning—”

“Potter, did you buy me to have me mop your floors?”

“No. No, all right? That’s stupid, we’re wizards. Anyway, I didn’t buy you at all.  You were assigned to me.”

“Pity.  I was wondering how much I cost.  So if not mopping your floors, then what?”

“It’s just…”  Harry stopped on the steps again and flung his hands up.  “There’s something I don’t know. Okay, there’s a lot of things I don’t know, don’t laugh.  But you, you know about traditional wizarding stuff. You were raised in a wizarding home. Hermione may be the most brilliant witch I’ve ever met, but she was raised Muggle too.  Obviously you know all this…” 

This time, when he turned around, his guest was far enough back on the stairs that he could actually look at him.  And sitting. Looking a bit gobsmacked, if the truth was to be told. “Wait. You want me to - to be an expert on pur - on traditional wizarding things?”

“Look, one thing I learned during the war was, you don’t get anywhere without knowledge.  Lots of it. I think you’ve got that knowledge. Am I wrong?”

”N-no.  No. You’re not wrong.”

“Brilliant! So maybe you can figure out how come I could get my bedroom spotless and all new and the rest of the house looks like grunge?  Or the dollhouse I found in the attic. Or- well any of it. You’re turning white… Kitten. Whiter than usual, I mean.”

“You were raised by Muggles . Harry Potter, the bloody saviour of wizardingkind, and they … just let you grow up not knowing any of this?  And then someone left you a wizarding home and nobody told you anything?’ Draco —- for a moment, he was one hundred percent the boy Harry had gone to school with —- shook his head incredulously. “All right. I can be your guide to all things wizarding that someone should have thought to teach you — seriously, how did you survive long enough to—” he cut himself off.  “Sorry. Sorry about that. The dollhouse is an important thing, but maybe we might have dinner first? If that’s okay?” He looked at Harry with sudden worry overtaking his whole body.

“Unless it’s going to make  _ this _ house fold up around us while we sleep, it can wait until tomorrow.  You still need to recuperate. I need to — adjust, I guess.”

“It won’t.  It’s letting you have the room you chose, and that’s a good sign.  So—” Draco tilted his head uncertainly downward. “Dinner, then?”

“Yeah, yes, of course.  Come on. Maybe you can explain things to me while I cook.”

“While you — that is  _ still _ going to take some getting used to.  Yes, of course. Sir? Should I call you sir?”

Harry started back down the stairs, letting himself take three or four stairs to think about that one.  “Look. If you can stomach it, why don’t you call me Harry? We’re going to be sharing a house, after all.  If not,  _ Potter _ is fine.”

“...Harry.  You know, I almost forgot that was your name.”

“You mean, when not attached to ‘ _ the bloody savior of the wizarding world _ ?’” Harry quoted.  He found it didn’t bother him from his guest the way it did from some people. 

“Yeah.  Yeah, just like, a thing people call you.  People do, I assume?”

“Hermione.  Ron, Gin, most of the Weasleys.  Neville and Luna.” He shrugged. “Here’s the kitchen.”  The flame was still on; the pot was still off of the flame.  “You can have a seat over here at the table. Maybe tell me why you started swearing when I mentioned the doll house — do you want some water?  Soda? Butterbeer?”

“I don’t know what  _ soda _ is but I’ll take a butterbeer, unless you have something with some actual strength to it. ”

“I do, but it’s Muggle,” Harry warned, before pouring them each a scotch on the rocks.  With a hungry guest in front of him, he gave in to wand shortcuts, getting the chicken taking itself apart and the herbs chopping themselves up.  “You know something about the house thing, then?”

“I do.”  Kitten sipped the drink, considered it, and sipped it again.  “It’s called  _ sanctum sanctorum. _  It’s a really complicated spell that used to be done on all the pur— wizarding houses.  To be honest, there’s a good chance the We…Wea… your friend Ron’s parents’ house probably has one.”  That seemed to require a long swig of the scotch. “This stuff is tolerable. Thank you.”

A “thank you” from Draco Malfoy was almost as improbable as the man being in his kitchen to start with.  “You’re welcome. Okay,  _ sanctum sanctorum _ .  What does it do?”  He recognized the word sanctum, at least.

“It depends on who cast it originally, how Dark or how Light they were, and how it’s been reinforced over the years.  For this house, it keeps it and the owner safe, at least, even before the  _ Fidelius  _ charm. To know more than that, I’d have to go digging around.  Maybe literally. The thing is.” Draco took a long swig of the scotch.  “You have to claim the house. From the looks of it, so far, you’ve only claimed the bedroom.”

“I can’t very well beat it in a wizarding duel.”  Harry got a little aggressive with chopping up some garnish.  There was too much  _ claim _ in the blasted wizarding world.  “I can’t, what, grab it by the back of neck.”

“Are you really this much of a —- what?”

“Well, bite it on the back of the neck, have you never seen two mammals —- seriously.”  Harry shook his head. “I can’t do that to the house, anyway.”

He almost missed the speculative look on Draco’s face. 

He shelved that for later. “So—-?”

“So what?  Oh. Claiming your house.  Did you really learn nothing in school, Potter?”

“Getting a bit sick of that line. Mostly, if you need to know, I learned how to not die.”  He turned his back to his guest and stated a spoon stirring the soup. Another muttered charm started breaking the chicken down far faster than the Muggle method.  

Silence reigned.  The soup was starting to fill the area with the aroma of spices and herbs.  Harry knew he was tense, but he didn’t dare around. He was not going to hex someone who had no way of fighting back.  He was not going to let the Ministry turn him into a bully for them.

“Was it that bad?  I mean.” Draco cleared his throat. “I know the last couple years, obviously.  But your whole-”

“My first year-”  He checked on the soup, pulled up a chair, and sat down, elbows on the table.  It was hard to hex someone when you had to think about where your arms were. “My first year, Quirrel and Voldemort nearly killed me.  Quirrel tried several times before the end there. My second year —- the Basilisk nearly killed me. Third year actually wasn’t too deadly, because it turned out Sirius wasn’t trying to kill me.  Fourth year —- you know what happened then. Fifth year was that … toad, Umbridge. And dementors coming after me at home. After that… You know the rest of it.” He looked up at Draco now and shrugged.  “I didn’t have a lot of time for the learning parts. ‘Mione’s been helping me work through the stuff I missed and some Muggle stuff, a little at a time.”

Draco looked a little surprised. “And potions?”  It was almost a challenge. 

“It’s hard to do well in a class when your teacher is living out his childhood hatred of your father through you. I —- Professor Snape did a lot for us, in the end. But he was a lousy potions teacher for me. I still have trouble with that sort of thing. That’s part of why ‘Mione and I are focusing on spells, not potions.” He looked up at Draco thoughtfully. “ _ You _ were good at potions.”

“Sev-” He appeared to check himself and then continued. “Severus was my godfather. I always wanted to do well in his class. And he was my Head of House.” His shrug looked eloquent, but Harry had no idea quite what he was trying to say. “I liked the subject. I did once think about becoming a Potions Master, but-” His gesture make the bracelets on his arms bob up and down and seemed to take in the house and his situation all in one.

Harry huffed. “How much time do you think the things I’ve already given you will take? I mean, reasonably?”

“I have no idea to be honest. Maybe an hour a day, as much as dusk to dawn on a difficult day. I’ve never done quite this kind of work before, so it will take some time before I know exactly what I’m doing.” Draco looked sidelong at him. “Are you thinking about having me mop your floors again, Potter?”

“If—-” Hermione would say that he shouldn’t put conditions like this one it. Hermione didn’t have to live with someone sneering  _ Potter _ at her. “Okay. If you can manage to stop sneering at me about my stupid education and stop spitting my name out like it tastes bad, I was thinking there’s probably a potions lab somewhere in this house. And ‘Mione would love someone to consult with about further spell development.”

“She’d love another person, you mean.” There was a bitter look on Malfoy’s face, like the idea tasted bad in his mouth. “I’m not a person, I’m a Death Eater slave whose family tortured her.”

Harry had a flash of something he hoped would turn out to be intelligence later. “Actually, you’re not. You’re… you really need to help me come up with a better name later, but you’re my Kitten, my household expert on all things potions and old-wizarding tradition.  You’re not that person that you were describing. And really, Hermione is never going to turn down a source of information. I had to talk her out of necromancy. Twice.” He rolled his eyes in affectionate exasperation, in part because that wasn’t even close to an exaggeration. 

Dra- Mal - Kit - his slave’s lips went up in something like a smirk at that.  “I will bow to your expertise in that matter. So you were asking about the  _ Sanctum Sanctorum _ ?”

“Yeah.  Yeah, please.  The soup will be another ten, fifteen minutes.”

He sat back and listened, then, as Draco explained —- in depth that Hermione would appreciate —- the spell how it was originally done and the things that were done to reinforce it.  He wasn’t taking it all in, he knew he wasn’t, but he was getting, he was pretty sure, the highlights. 

“So the seasons,” he double-checked, “the solstices and the equinoxes.  There’s ceremonies. And then there’s the key rooms in the house, of which the kitchen really ought to be one.  And there’s the compass points. And then there’s, little ceremonies? Daily? Really daily?”

“Some of these things are literally three heartbeats long.  The daily things, yes, three times a day. Once the house knows it’s yours, you can back it off to doing one of them, but by then they’re habit.  There’s a bonus,” Kitten added. “The more you claim the house, the more it knows that it’s yours, the less willing it will be to let any harm come to you.  And I know there are still some people that have it out for you. People that didn’t end up in Azkaban.”

Harry sighed.  He knew it, too.  “Tomorrow. Tomorrow, I’ll show you the dollhouse, and we can start there, all right?  Tonight, you are going to eat good nourishing soup and get a solid night of sleep.” The soup, pushed along by magic, was smelling properly done.  Harry dished out a generous bowl for his guest and added a big hunk of bread from the local bakery and a little pot of soft butter. While his guest was still staring at the food, he dished out his own and sat down. 

“The dining room is still all covered in sheets since the Weasleys were last all here. So we’ll eat in the kitchen, at least tonight.  Maybe there’s a sort of, I don’t know, informal place, but I haven’t found it yet.”

“We’ll find it.”  After Harry had taken a couple bites of his soup, his guest dug in, looking like he had a new quest in life.  “Once we see that dollhouse, we’ll get it all sorted out.”


	5. Accio

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter involves sexual contact that might be considered dubious on the consent.

There had been a lot of temptation, on Harry’s part and on that of his new guest-slash-slave, to start digging into the house right away, but once-Draco was clearly exhausted, and Harry wasn’t exactly bright-eyed and bushy tailed himself.  So he’d showed Draco to the nice, tidy, far-too-neutral guest room across the hall from his — the only other room he’d managed to keep clean, mostly by checking it out almost every day — and then he’d flopped into his own bed. 

With a guest in the house, he wouldn’t take Dreamless Sleep, and anyway, he’d promised Hermione that he’d keep it to a few times a month and he was already running short on days this month by that oath.  If Gin was in town - but he wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardize her career right now, especially not ask her to come home in the middle of a tour just because he was having trouble sleeping. 

Besides, he wanted a little time to get used to having a new guest-slave in his house before he had to deal with once-Draco Malfoy and Ginny Weasley in the same room as each other. 

He fell asleep thinking about Ginny, her ready smile and angry glare, her hexes and her kisses.  She was  _ fire _ , and he missed her warmth in his life when she was gone.

He woke to what he thought, at first, was a pleasant dream, brought on by thoughts of Gin and the things he wanted to do with her when she returned.  He reached a hand down, half asleep, to tousle her long red hair as she woke him up in a most pleasant manner.

The hair his hand found was short and smoother than Ginny’s straightened curls.  His pleasant half-awake state was gone in a moment of shattering realization.

“Dr-” No. No, damnit. “Kitten. Mmm… Oh, Merlin.” He summoned every bit of willpower he owned: who would have expected the man formerly known as Draco Malfoy to be that skilled with his tongue? “Kitten…. stop that. Come up here. Please? Come on… up here.” He coaxed the man up next to him like he really was a kitten and pulled the blanket over both of them. Looking over, he thought his guest might be even less awake than he was; Draco was blinking at him in the dark.

“You know—” He stretched over Draco for his glasses and wand and cast a faint  _ lumos _ .  Then he could look into the other boy’s sleepy, worried eyes. “You know you don’t have to do that. Right?”

A mute nod did more to worry him than to reassure him.  He had never known Draco to be quiet.

“So…”  He struggled for words.  “What just happened?”

He braced for a lazy drawl pointing out that  _ what just happened _ was pretty obvious even to the thickest Gryffindor. 

He didn’t get it.

“I— ” The blonde blinked at him like he was still trying to wake up.  His cheeks were starting to flush. “If you must know — and I suppose you must,” he added, in a mutter that sounded almost embarrassed, as if  _ that  _ was an emotion that happened to Draco Malfoy, “I was dreaming.  Dreaming about, well — things. Shitty things. I’m sure I don’t want to bore you.  I woke up in the midst of the dream to find myself walking over here. At your door, actually. It was as if  someone had accio’d me.  _ Accio slave _ .  Now wouldn’t that be useful?  So here I was, then. Awake, or thinking I might still be dreaming.  And in your bedroom. And you’ve been, well, you’ve been decent so far.  I didn’t expect that.” He looked away, not that there was anything to see in the dim bedroom.  “So.” He swallowed. Harry found the throat movement far more distracting than it ought to be. “I wanted to be — want to be — to be appreciative.”

Harry thought vile thoughts at the entire Department of Reconstruction, Azkaban, and the entire House of Slytherin. “Look, mate.”  Probably not the best choice of words. “You don’t have to do anything like that, okay?”

The blonde’s face was doing something worrisome, something that looked like panic.  “I just — you — oh, Merlin.” He flushed and looked away.

Harry found himself putting an arm around Draco’s — Kitten’s — shoulders, probably not the best idea at the moment all things considered. “Look.  Okay utterly aside from....” Shit, he was bad at this sort of thing.

_ What would Hermione say _ usually did him well, but Hermione probably didn’t have something in mind for a situation where your ex-nemesis was trying to give you gratitude head. 

Facts.  He could go with facts.  “Gin and I are a thing. You know that right? Ginny Weasley?”

That seemed to relax Kitten, although not in the way Harry had been intending. 

“Merlin, Potter, I’m not trying to be your  _ boyfriend _ .  I couldn’t even if I wanted to.  You can’t be someone’s boyfriend when you don’t even exist as a person.  I’m just trying to be —” He threw up his hands and huffed. “Grateful. Good.”

“If you wanted to be my boyfriend, you’d probably have to manage my first name.  At least once in a while.”

“I could just go with ‘sir’ instead.  I know a couple, that’s all they ever called each other.  Not Death eaters, either. Just a weird pure-blood couple.”  Draco looked up at Harry with something that was almost a smile.  It didn’t last long. “Be more appropriate, anyway. I’m not your boyfriend…  _ sir _ .  I’m your slave.”

“Even if you — Even —”  Harry huffed. “Look. I’m not going to do anything… sexual… with you, anything.  Unless I know that one, Gin’s okay with it, two, you actually want it, and three, I want it.  Which is more complicated that you might think.”

“Oh, I don’t know.  I might have some idea.” Draco’s gaze raked up and down him. 

Harry didn’t squirm.  He’d had enough of people looking at him like an interesting cut of meat, thank you.  He shook his head instead. “If you’re anywhere near as conflicted about this as I am, then it’s not going to happen, even if Gin  _ is _ okay with it.  There’s too much chance of accidental coercion, and I don’t want to do that.”

Now, the look Draco gave him could curdle milk.  Harry waited. A moment later, the sour expression was replaced with disbelief.  “You mean it, don’t you? Saint Potter, the savior of Death Eaters and — argh.” His hands went up to his temples.  “Argh,  _ fuck _ .  Fuck this collar and your sainthood and all of it.”  He dug his fingernails into his forehead like he could pry the pain out. 

“Easy, easy.”  Harry took Draco’s hands and pulled them gently away.  “Have you found anything that alleviates the pain?”

“A stupefy and a potion of dreamless sleep?” Draco muttered. “The whole point of it, Potter, is that I’m not supposed to be able to alleviate it.  It’s  _ punishment _ .”

“Merlin’s balls.”  Harry huffed. “How long does it last?”

“Depends.  Depends on what I’m thinking and if I try to fight it.”

“And this time?”

“This time I was trying to pretend none of this was real.”

Harry snorted.  “I can’t fault you for that one, mate.”  He considered the pained face. “I’m gonna try something.  Tell me if you don’t like it, all right?”

“Potter... fine.  Fine. I’ll tell you if I don’t like what you’re doing.”

Harry released Draco’s hands and, before he could bring them back up to his temples, put his own hands there instead.  He rubbed carefully, trying to remember the places his head had hurt the most when his scar had still been bothering him. 

“Okay?” he asked, when Draco said nothing.

“Potter…”  He huffed and sighed.  “Yeah. It feels nice, if you must know.  But you needn’t pretend to  _ like _ me or do all of this.  I’m not exactly not going to tell anyone that you’re not the Savior of the Wizarding World in your off-time.  Hell, you could tie me to your bed and —” he cleared his throat. “You get the idea. And I still wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“Why the blazes not?”  Harry pushed himself up in bed to stare down at Draco, the massage forgotten.  A more observant man might have noted the way that his guest pushed back a little on the bed and froze, but Harry was not paying quite close enough of attention at the moment.  “Why?” he repeated. 

“Because there’s not a thing you could do to me that would be worse than being back in Azkaban, than having the D — you-know-who living in my family house. Nothing. And because you’re the bloody saint of Wizards, and I  _ know _ , even if all this talk is martyrdom role bullshit, that even you at your worst -”

“You still have the scar,” Harry muttered.  “You know what I’m like at my worst.”

“Yeah, well, I think you have an idea what I’m like at my worst, too,” Draco snapped.   “So look. Even at your worst, I know you’re not going to — There’s nothing you would do to me…” He trailed off and looked away.  Harry waited. He’d been learning to do that, wait. He still didn’t like it, but he could do it. With the right motivation. Turned out having an upset person who  _ belonged _ to him in bet with him, that was almost as good a motivation as Gin putting her hand over his mouth and saying “listen.”

“It’s just that I trust you, you moron!  So you don’t have to bother with all this ‘avoiding accidental coercion’ stuff.  I’m not going to tell anyone anything what happens. And I won’t tell your girlfriend if you don’t want me to.”

Harry shook his head slowly.  He wanted to be angry, to holler and yell at Draco that none of it was a lie, none of it was a posture.  He wanted to shake the man. 

He did nothing except shake his head -  and still, something in Draco’s face crumpled.  

“You’re… oh, bollocks.  None of it is an act, is it?”

“Sorry, mate.”  Harry patted his shoulder, unsure if that would make it worse or better or— have Draco leaning into his hand, that hadn’t been on his list of options.  Not even on the “oh shit” list of options. 

_ Oh yeah, _ he remembered, his stomach a little tight.   _ Accio Slave. _

He cleared his throat.  “No. And uh. You’re making me a little worried about the rest of the people in your position.”

“Worry about me right now, Potter.”  He sounded so imperious, so much like  _ himself _ , that Harry had to smile.  “In the morning, then you can save the rest of the world.  But tonight - you seriously don’t want me to suck your cock?   Is it because I’m, uh.  I’m a bloke? It turns out I’m really good at Transfiguration…”

“Oh, Hestia’s tits.”  Harry put both of his hands over his face. “No, no.” It was muffled, “it’s not because you’re a bloke.  I like blokes just fine. No, it is honestly — do I have to swear on my wand here?-”

“Well,” Draco quipped — so maybe there was hope for him after all — “we  _ are _ talking about that.  Your wand, that is,” he added, as if he genuinely thought Harry was a little thick. 

“Mrph.  I swear on my wand, then,” he made a crude gesture around the “wand” in question, “that the reasons I am telling you not to suck my cock tonight is because I want to be sure Ginny, you, and I okay with it. And  _ not _ because of anything to do with your skill — which was amazing — or your gender — which is fine — or your looks — which I’m sure you already know are gorgeous.  Now can we please go back to sleep?”

Draco shifted.  “You’re something else, Potter… sir…” he muttered.  “Do you — do you want me to — I should go.”

_ Accio slave _ .

Harry tch’d.  “I never finished rubbing your temples.”  He patted Draco’s shoulder. “You can stay.  Seems the spell —  _ thing —  _ wants you here anyway, and I like the company.”

Draco had been having shitty dreams too, he remembered. He put a little more effort into rubbing the other man’s temples.  “And I…” Well, it wasn’t like he could  _ trust _ Draco, but on the other hand… “Look, I sleep better when I have company.”

Draco’s eyes opened slowly.  “Can’t imagine,” he drawled, but this time it was clear he was joking, “why on earth the Savior of the Wizarding World would have bad dreams.  I have it on good authority that I make a very good teddy bear.”

Harry slowly let up on the pressure of the massage until he was almost petting the other man.  “Whose authority?” He found he couldn’t picture Draco cuddling up with anyone at all. Goyle? It seemed unlikely. 

“Pansy.”  Just like that, the tension Harry had worked away came back. 

“Ah.”  He lay back down and, as cautiously as he had with Gin when she and he were first dating, pulled Draco into a spoon against him.  He rubbed the other man’s shoulder until he loosened at least a little of the tension once more. 

Pansy had gone to the Weasleys.  

_ Save the rest of the world in the morning _ . 

He still couldn’t stop wondering where  _ she _ slept at night. 


	6. Carbonation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione and Ron interrupt everything.

Questions of sex, sleeping arrangements, dollhouses, houses themselves, and almost everything else were put aside the next morning, because Hermione Granger nearly-Weasley was a morning person. 

Harry left Draco negotiating breakfast with Kreacher in the kitchen, an arrangement that seemed to simultaneously make both of them very happy and enrage them both and left Harry sitting on pins and needles, thinking uncomfortably of Aunt Petunia. 

He invited Hermione and Ron in, looking between the bakery bags Ron was carrying and the paperwork Hermione had.  “The sitting room,” he decided. “Merlin, Hermione, what  _ is  _ all of that?”

“It’s — well, let’s see. This third is the new law the Department of Reconstruction is attempting to push through. This third is paperwork about the law that led to the whole slave issue. And *this* third is for later, that’s some notes I took on spellwork and potions when we went to the library in Rome last weekend. Hello, Harry. How have you been? You look better than you’ve been looking.”

He wasn’t going to say “Draco insisted on combing my hair this morning, and then he insisted I Transfigure my pants to actually fit,” because he had some idea how Ron would handle that.  He smiled and flopped down in a chair, calling the table they’d been using for work over to him. “Thanks. You look-” He took a moment to actually consider his friends. He ought to do that more often, shouldn’t he?  “You look brilliant, Hermione. That is,” he hurried, because Ron could sometimes get jealous over the stupidest things, “you look like you’re really happy. And you, mate,” he turned to Ron- “You look like you’ve just flown a winning game that lasted eighteen hours.”

Hermione -  _ Hermione _ \- giggled. ”Oh, Rome was brilliant!  And it was rather nice, having - well - ah.”

“You can say it, ‘Mione.”  Ron’s smile was tired but pleased.  “It was nice having privacy. I love my family, but-”

“I hear you.”  Harry, who had never had that sort of family to worry about, had spent just long enough at the Burrow to know that he needed to live somewhere that was his. “You know -”  He gestured upstairs. “There’s room. Gin is only here about a quarter of the time and I wouldn’t mind the company-”

Ron’s face fully explained why they would never be moving in with him.   “Sorry, mate, but I just can’t - in the same house - under the same roof - my baby  _ sister _ .”

“I know, I know.”  Harry huffed. “But I’m not going to not leave the offer open, am I?”

“Harry, we really do appre- oh.”  Hermione was looking over Harry’s shoulder at the doorway.  “Oh, the Department  _ did _ talk you in to… Oh.  Hello, Malfoy.”

“Oh, brilliant.”  Ron’s face lit up.  “Malfoy, get me a drink, would you?  Soda, if Harry has them. He usually does.  They’re the things in the funny Muggle cans.  Bring a glass, too, if Kreacher’s left one clean.  The cans taste like - can.”

Harry looked at Draco, who was paler than he ought to be, frozen in the doorway.  He looked back at his friends. 

He didn’t feel the way the decision snapped inside him until after he’d started talking. 

“Okay, house rules.”  He was surprised to find he sounded like he was joking around. Well, that would make it easier for Ron to swallow.  “So he’s not a house-elf and, come on, Ron, Hermione wouldn’t stand for you treating a house-elf that way. I’ll get it for you or you can get it yourself, but we don’t treat him like a house-elf.”

“Oh, come on Harry, it’  _ Malfoy _ .  And  he’s literally a slave.  You can’t say you haven’t had the urge to-”  Ron huffed as Hermione kicked him. “What? I’m being honest.  If the roles were reversed-”

“To be a hundred percent honest, yeah.  But not - uh. He has no choice in the matter.  None. That really takes any fun that would be in it out of it.”

“He had a choice not to be a bloody Death Eater!”  Ron leaned forward, glaring between Harry and Draco, but he wasn’t all that worked up.  Good. That would make what Harry had to say a bit easier. 

“I’m not sure he actually did.  Guys, there’s some things about this prisoner-slave arrangement we really have to look into.  But, well - no directly related to that, here’s the other house rule. We can’t call him Malfoy.”

“What, we have to call him Draco?”

“No. That’s the problem.”  Harry cleared his throat. “They took his name away from him.  It’s physically painful for him to acknowledge that name.” In for a penny, in for a pound; he held out a hand to Draco.  Not-Draco.

The man hesitated in the doorway for a moment before moving, eyes on Ron and Hermione, towards - but not all the way to - Harry. “So, he suggested that since houses generally have a theme for their house-elves, I name him for some sort of, uh.  Creature.”

“Harry!  Harry, I know he’s - he’s - I know you’ve always had issues with him, but he’s not a a house-elf.”

“I know, ‘Mione. I know.  But this thing - this ‘not Imperio’ thing - it’s messed up.  So.” He looked up at not-Draco; this time he got a look back.  “This is Demon. And he’s going to help me get Grimmauld Place here set to rights and acting like a proper house.”

Draco’s- Demon’s- eyebrows went up slightly.  More importantly, he smiled. And then, most importantly, he sat down - on the floor at Harry’s feet, pressed against Harry’s left leg like a cat.

Harry let out a breath.

Ron looked at Demon, at Harry, at Hermione.  He looked like he was going to sputter. “So it - if I had one of those collars - if you called me Ron and I answered - or Weasley, or -”

“Molly’s youngest son,” Demon put in.  “Or George’s little brother. Probably even ‘Weasel.’”

“So I can’t even call you a ferret?”

“I’d rather you not.”

“But wait.  If I call you Ma- If I call you by your name, it  -”

“Every bit of recognition is painful, yes, Weasley-” He faltered and looked up at Harry.

“You can call him Weasley.  Ron, you okay with him calling you by your last name?”

“Is he going to get me a drink?”  Ron smirked and waved his hand before Hermione could yell at him “Kidding, kidding.  So... Demon, is it? Demon, can I get you anything from the kitchen? ‘Mione? Harry?”  He pried himself to his feet. 

Hermione asked for a water; she always asked for a water.  Harry asked for the same.

“It’s a good thing you both came up with that shield spell.  Ma- Demon?”

“I’m pretty good at brewing potions.”  Demon cleared his throat. “If I have a wand, I mean.  You get attacked a lot?”

“Lot of angry people out there.”  Ron shrugged it off, but Harry had seen the injuries.  “Do you want a  _ drink _ , mate?”

“Oh!  Uh-” It was a strange sight, Draco Malfoy without smooth words.  “Might I have one of those sodas, if you don’t mind?” 

“Sure mate, anything.”  Wearing a decidedly odd face, Ron headed out into the kitchen. 

Demon leaned harder into Harry’s leg.  Harry dropped a hand down to the closer shoulder.  

“Okay, ‘Mione, so let’s see.  They’re lying about what the collar does — or, at least they’re not telling us nearly enough about it.  That is bad to start with, and when you think about how many people now have… probation-slaves, whatever… it gets pretty scary.  I mean are they just not telling anyone anything? Seems to be their m.o. right now. Or are they not telling  _ me _ anything, because they think I'll throw a fit?"

"Which begs the question - if they didn't want you to know, why give you a-" Hermione twisted her face up "-probation-slave - they're not even pretending to have it be anything nice or pleasant, are they?  It's a horrible name. - but why give you one anyway? Since you'd be bound to find something out."

"Not if he wasn't Saint Potter."  Demon looked up at Hermione. "If he was the sort of git that wanted to get revenge and didn't mind that the other person had no choice in the matter - he wouldn't ask.  And if he was that sort of jerk, I probably wouldn't have volunteered anything. But it turns out he really is a saint."

"I could have told you that."  Hermione smiled fondly at Harry.  "He has a habit of thinking about other people, even if he does get wrapped up in thinking about himself, too."  Her look turned stern as she aimed it at Demon. "Now don't you take advantage of that."

"And how would I do that, anyway?"  He held up his arms with the gold cuffs on them.  "You're the smart one, you  _ know _ I'm bound to him."

"You're pretty bright yourself.  And I know you could figure it out if you wanted to.  I'm pretty sure Harry will treat you well-"

"I'm right here," Harry protested.  

Hermione was unbothered.  "Well, you will, won't you?  Take care of him, treat him well?"

"Well, yeah.  Of course I will.  That's the excuse they gave for why they gave him to me.  But, 'Mione, we're going to have to look into this thing. Talk to some of the other people we know who got... probation-slaves-"

"Who did Lovegood get?  I know they would have given her someone.  They would have given Griphook someone if it wouldn't come precious close to breaking their compact."

Draco - Demon - was an odd combination of sharp questions and the soft body language, still pressed against Harry's leg.  Hermione would probably give him grief about that later. But there was a lot she might give him grief about later. 

"Goyle," she was telling Demon now, her voice a little sad and a little gentle.  "They get along surprisingly well. I have the whole list-"

"Not  - not yet." Demon's voice did something a little strange.  "I - not yet, all right?"

"Here's your water, 'Mione," Ron came in with splendid timing.  "And yours, Harry. And here's your soda, Ma - Demon." There was a pregnant pause.  "Be careful," Ron added. "Harry can show you how they open, but they like to spray. I brought you a glass, too."

Demon looked up at Ron with a look of wary caution on his face. "Spray?"

"It's called Carbuncle or carborendum or something," Ron explained. 

Harry counted in his head.   _ One, Two... _

"Carbonation, Ron."  Hermione chuckled. "It's done by adding carbon dioxide and carbonic acid to a fluid - generally a cold fluid works best.  This causes air bubbles and a slight tang to it. Generally, Muggles do this with sugared drinks, or with drinks with artificial sweetener-"

"Artificial sweetener?" Demon interrupted. 

"It's the sort of thing that makes something taste sweet, sometimes sickeningly sweet, without the - hrmph.  You know how food fuels you?"

"Well, it gives you energy," Demon responded. 

"And if you take in more energy than you spend?"

"Then you end up round.  Most wizards who  _ do _ anything with their lives don't end up round, because magic, of course, takes energy."

"So Muggles can't spend magic, so if you imagine someone with a Ministry desk job who liked lots of sugar..."

"They'd become round as a ball!"

Harry snorted.  "That's a pretty good description of my Muggle relatives."  Too late, he remembered that he'd told his Kitten - his Demon Kitten, ha - almost nothing about the Dursleys and had been planning on keeping it that way.  Too late now. He rolled with it. "Ron, do you remember?"

"Oh, Merlin, that uncle of yours!  I thought he was going to burst like a ripe melon!  Your cousin settled down later, didn't he?"

"Maybe.  I mean, he's getting there... He was.  The last time I saw them." Harry shrugged defensively.  He didn't think all that much about the Dursleys. Possibly not enough.  "Maybe I ought to make sure they came through all right and everything."

"Harry, you haven't -"

"Easy, 'Mione, don't give him trouble for it.  They weren't proper family, you know that. You know what they did to Harry.  Some of it, yeah?"

Harry, who didn't want to go into this at all, leaned down to Demon, then, deciding this was better done not right in anyone's face, scooted down onto the floor.  "So, unless Ron was a blighter and shook the can-"

"Oy, I only did that once, and it was Percy, and everyone agreed it was funny!  Even Percy!"

"...They're getting better about Percy," Harry muttered, even though he knew it was half wishful thinking on his part.  "Okay, so, just in case, you point the opening away from your face and you pop the top like this." He had done this plenty of times now - for Ron, Ginny, and George, and then a half-dozen times for Mr. Weasley.  It was getting easy. "Like that." He poured a bit of the soda into the glass. "And then be careful pouring, because it will fuzz up like that and overflow the glass if you're not paying attention."

Draco stared at the can and the glass.  "Carbonation," he repeated carefully. "Carbon dioxide and carbonic acid.  To any fluid?"

"That is a very good question and I would have to research it," Hermione answered without hesitation.  "Definitely to water-based fluids."

He sipped the soda very cautiously.  "Muggle magic is strange," he declared.  


	7. Scourgify

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every time Hermione comes over, Harry ends up with homework.

"The thing about Hermione visiting - don't get me wrong, she's one of my best friends and I love having her come over - it's just that I always end up with homework."

Harry looked at the stack of papers and the carefully-written notes ruefully.  "But I guess some of this is for you... Demon." He tilted his head. "I guess I sprung that on you."

Demon snorted.  "Didn't want to get caught out calling your slave 'Kitten' in front of your friends?"

"Didn't think you'd appreciate it, and besides..." Harry hesitated, trying to get the feelings into words without sounding like an idiot. "Kitten is a private name?"

"I'm not sure you're supposed to have pet names for your slave.  For your... pet Death-Eater?" He rubbed at the sleeve covering the Dark Mark.

Harry caught his hand.  "Maybe not. But I guess I have one for you.  So unless you object...?"

"I like it better than  _ ferret _ ." Demon smiled. "I actually like Demon, too.  So Granger really does give you homework?"

"She's the most organized of all of us. And we have a lot we want to do.  So she assigns the tasks. Besides," he smirked, "she's the only one that can get Ron to do research, and we have to spread that stuff out among the Aurors or it looks really obvious, you know."

He was getting a very strange look from Demon.  "What?" He shifted from foot to foot.

"You're still at war.  Was this what you were like, when you were fighting the Dark Lord?"

"When we were - when we were fighting Voldemort, we were kids."  Harry slumped into his seat. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess we were. And I guess we are.  The Ministry - it's done some pretty shady stuff in the last couple years, and they keep leaning on their Golden Trio, on the Boy Who Slew The Snake, on any figure they can.  It's like Slughorn, like Bagman, only worse, because they just wanted to make themselves look good and these people, they want us to make their laws look good and their laws, they stink.  Which I don't have to tell you."

"No."  Demon shook his head.  "They're out for blood to cleanse their own sins.  It's all quite dramatic and old-fashioned and it might be interesting to watch if I weren't stuck in the middle of it."  He cleared his throat. "So. Seventeen inches on my experiences as a prisoner of Azkaban and as a probation-slave? Did she say when it was due by?"

"Not today."  Harry took Demon's hand.  "Today - well, let's see. Today.." He looked his - his - his  _ slave _ up and down and frowned.  "Well, you need to eat some more, first.  And then - damnit."

"What?"  There was something trying to be a sneer on Demon's face, but it looked too nervous to be a proper one.  "Does my hair clash with your mess?"

"Well, the thing is, you need clothes.  And I think we all know my wizarding fashion sense is rubbish and my Muggle sense isn't much better.  You can't go to Diagon Alley in my transfigured jogger bottoms and t-shirt, and my robes would be ridiculous on you."

"You're talking nonsense, Pot... Harry."  Demon tried the name like he was checking out its fit.  "Diagon Alley?"

"Did you seriously think I was going to keep you locked in the house?" Harry shook his head.  "Would your old clothes fit you? Suit you?"

"What are you going to do, go knock on the door to Malfoy Manor and kindly ask the Auror guarding it to let you raid my closet?"

“No… No, I think I’m going to make a Floo call.”  He stretched, working out the kinks from hours working with Hermione and Ron. “All right, let’s see how this ‘do what I say’ thing really works. You can listen in, but I don’t want you in sight or saying anything at all until I tell you that you can. Understand?”

Demon opened his mouth, closed it, and nodded. He considered the floo and then moved into the hallway, just out of sight of the fireplace.

“Thanks. One step at a time will be easier.” He steeled himself, threw the floo powder into the fireplace, and called out, “Malfoy Manor.”

Somewhere in the hall, someone - presumably his Demon - squeaked. 

A house-elf answered a moment later.  “Harry Potter! What can Biskie do for Harry Potter?”

“I’d like to speak to Lady Malfoy, please.”

“One moment, please, Mr. Harry Potter.”  The elf vanished in a pop. 

It was a surprisingly short time before Narcissa Malfoy appeared and then sat down in a chair provided by Biskie.  “Harry Potter. To what do I owe the honor?”

The golden spell-band that kept her under house arrest was obvious on her ankle, but she managed to make it look like a particularly fashionable piece of jewelry.  “You know about the, ah. The probation-slave program that the Ministry’s Department of Reconstruction has underwent.”

He had decided in the last year that he was not going to mince words with anyone, much less the purebloods.  It made everything a little awkward, but at least he didn’t have to keep track of what he was saying and what he actually meant. 

“Yes.  I was lucky - no, fortunate enough, thank you - to avoid that fate myself.  Are you calling to tell me that’s changed?”

“What? No.  No, I’m not in charge of any of that.  No, I - ah. They gave me… your son.” He was pretty sure he could say that without any pain to Draco.  Hopefully. He held up both hands. “He’s fine. Well, as fine as you can imagine, considering he was in Azkaban.  He’s going to be fine. But I was wondering - my fashion sense is rubbish, everyone knows that. Do you have any of his clothes that you could send through with a House Elf?”

“So you can have him scrubbing the floor in his finest robes?”

“Why does everyone think I want him scrubbing floors?  Honestly.” Harry scoffed. “No. So he can feel like a person and wear clothes that are familiar to him.  I’ll take him shopping and buy him more, but if he has some of his own things, it might help him feel less… adrift.”

Narcissa studied him.  “You are disconcertingly honest.”

“I know.  It’s good for confusing people.”  Harry smiled at her, hoping it didn’t make her angry.  “Do you think you could? I mean-” He hadn’t bothered changing, on purpose.  He was wearing another pair of his own joggers and a T-shirt with a Muggle logo on it.  “It might make him more comfortable.”

“And you care about his comfort?”

“Yes.”  There was no point in lying about that.  “I do. He’s - He didn’t ask for any of this.”  He knew Demon could hear him. “He didn’t want any of it.  So yeah, I care if he’s comfortable.”

There was a long pause while Narcissa thought.  Then she gestured behind her. “Biskie. Fetch Draco’s trunk and fill it with his favorite clothes.  And-” she glanced at Harry as if seeing if he’d say no “-some of his other school things. The books he thinks I don’t know about and maybe, ah. “  She tilted her face back to Harry. “No, that should be enough.”

Biskie vanished.  Harry let out a breath. 

“I’m going to bring him in here.  Something you have to understand. The collar they put on him - it punishes certain things.  Answering to his name is one of those. Any of his family name. Maybe even ‘son.’ I gave him a, a house name, something i can call him by, because I can’t call him ‘Draco.’  I won’t stand for anyone calling him that, because it’s going to hurt him. I won’t stand for anyone hurting him.”

He was suddenly very fierce.  Where had that come from?

From the look on Narcissa’s face, she was wondering the same thing.  She cleared her throat and raised her eyebrows in an amazingly aristocratic fashion. 

“I understand.  I will not call him by his name.  But you will - you will allow me to speak with him?”

“And let him talk to you, yeah.  Yeah, of course. “

“And if I had not been willing to send you his clothing?”

“I’d still let you talk to him, but I might have, uh.  I might had suggested that he’d pointed out to you that he had no clothes.   Demon, come on in.” Harry stood and took a seat off to the side of the room.  “Go ahead, Demon, you can talk to her.”

Draco sat down slowly and looked his mother over in the Floo flames while she did the same with him.  “Mother, I-”

“You look…”  She cleared her throat and considered.  “You look like you’re getting better.”

“Potter is-”  Demon looked over at him and cleared his throat.  Harry picked up a book that Hermione had left and started to read the thick, stultifying text. 

“-better than he ought to be, if I’m being honest, and I suppose I might as well, all things considered.  Are you really sending over some of my clothes?”

“Well, regardless of everything, I am  - I am still your mother.” Narcissa hesitated.  “And I hope that you can forgive me for all of that ‘everything’.  I can’t have you wandering around looking like some sort of child of a hobo.”

They talked some more, but Harry had stopped paying attention; as thick and chewy as the book was, some of the laws were actually quite interesting once you got into them - or at least, once Hermione had taught him how to find the interest in them. 

When Biskie appeared with the chest, Harry came back to the floo to let the House-Elf through.  “I’ll be sure to let him call you again, Lady Malfoy. Maybe, if the Aurors don’t mind, we can visit some time.”

“I would like that.  Thank you, Mister Potter.  And… Demon. Take care of yourself, and of Mister Potter.”  She reached out as if she could pat Demon’s cheek, and his hand, in a gesture Harry pretended like mad that he couldn’t see, went to his own cheek.

Harry spent a few minutes in the kitchen to give Demon a moment to pull himself together. When he came out, his - his prisoner - was sitting peacefully in a chair as if nothing had happened.  He rose when he saw Harry. 

“So.”  His lips quirked up.  “We’re going to pick a room, and I’m going to show you how to claim it.  I was thinking the sitting room, since you’ve already started to make a mark on it.  Is that all right?”

“Do you want to-”

“I want to do what I’m told. Okay?  I want to be good at this, so that when they ask if I am remorseful, you’ll tell them whatever they want to hear so they’ll let me go back home.  I want to  _ be... _ I’m your slave.  So you want me to help you claim this place, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

Harry blinked.  That was a lot of  - that was a lot of pain, he thought, coming out in a voice that almost sounded like the old Draco Malfoy. “All right.”  He thought about the rest of it. “The sitting room is a good place to start. We do a lot of work in there.”

“Good.  So -” Demon’s lips curled up in a little smirk. “We’re going to start with  _ Scourgify _ .  No, wait, that’s only the basic part but even if it had stayed clean - and you know it didn’t - you had Weasley over and you know he left crumbs everywhere.  If you were working correctly with Kreacher, he would be cleaning up after that, but that’s part of claiming the house, too. Now come.”

Demon was still wearing Harry’s transfigured jogger bottoms and t-shirt, but he looked regal again.  Harry followed, wondering if he’d made some bad decisions leading to this. 

“Now.  First, you clean everything.  Everything. And then we will start with the things that make it a proper home.  Ready?”

“Ready,” Harry muttered.  He pulled out his wand and started casting. 


	8. Ad Centrī Mea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why is it that everything seems to involve cleaning?

There was not a spot of the sitting room that wasn't clean. 

It was still shabby.  It was still dark, and a lingering smell of decay seemed to stick around the edges.  The light didn't make it all the way through the sparkling clean windows. 

But it was cleaner than it had ever been, even when Molly Weasley was in residence. 

Harry was panting and a little sweaty; so was Demon.  They stood in the center of the room and looked up at the chandelier - their last bit of cleaning - triumphantly. Demon had been working either wandlessly or with Muggle cleaning tools; Harry had been using far too much Scourgify.  He wasn't sure which, in the long run, was harder. 

"There." Demon smiled at him.  "Now. We need a little incense.  Do you have any? Wait, I know." He raised his voice. "Kreacher!"

The house-elf popped up in front of them.  "What does Master's slave want? What does the little -"

"Our master needs incense.  Evergreen, preferably, or amber if you don't have that."  Demon sounded - different. Harry couldn't figure out quite how, though. 

"Our master needs-" Krecher mocked, but something seemed to have shifted in the house-elf's shoulders.  He stood up a little taller. "Our master needs?"

"And while you're at it," Demon added, "fetch two yards of clean linen.  Very clean, the fine stuff. Don't tell me that this house doesn't have it somewhere."

"Our master needs?" Kreacher repeated.  "Needs from Kreacher?"

"Yes," Harry affirmed.  He might be rubbish at house-elves and all of that, but even he could see a fill-in-the-blank spot when it was left open for him. "I do."

"Kreacher will do."  The house-elf vanished in a pop. 

Harry turned to Demon - he found the more he thought of the man that way, the more the name seemed to fit - "Do you-"

Kreacher re-appeared with another pop.  He bowed down to Harry and presented the incense.  "Evergreen incense and a burner last used by the great Vega Black, she who was great-great-great grandmother to Master's godfather, the -"  Kreacher paused. "To Master's godfather. And Krecher brought fresh clean linen as well."

"Thank you, Kreacher."  Harry raised an eyebrow at Demon. 

"Thank you.  If our Master would be so kind as to learn a spell from this humble one?"

This was... this was way out of Harry's league.  He nodded, because he could handle nodding, and hoped that it looked solemn enough. 

"Thank you.  If you will say the words  _ forma creare _ while thinking about something suitable for Kreacher here?  And it goes with a gesture-" Demon picked up a feather duster and reversed it so that he could show the wand gesture to Harry. 

Harry practiced it several times with the duster before he pulled out his wand.  Kreacher was looking - if Harry could guess at all about the miserable thing's body language - sort of worried and sort of curious. 

What was proper for a house-elf? It couldn't be clothes.  But it could be something that was comfortable and looked nice.  Kreacher always looked cold. 

He hummed for a moment before his wand started in the weird dip-and-twist of the spell.  " _ Forma Creare!" _

Demon took the resultant -  _ don't think of it as a garmen _ t - from Harry and unfolded it, studied it, and smiled.  "You even managed a belt. I'm imp-" He cut himself off and refolded the thing before handing it to Kreacher. "It is better for the house if you are proud of yourself, Kreacher.  It is better for our master if it is better for the house."

Kreacher took the thing - Harry had been concentrating on something with sleeves, so it had turned out like a tunic or a long shirt, with a slit down the front of the neck hole.  He didn't remember where he'd seen things like this, but it looked  _ warm _ , and it was clean. He hadn't expected that it had actually turned itself into two layers, complete with belt, which had been done in patterns like flames somehow.  The house-elf bowed shallowly to Demon and then deeply to Harry. "Master wishes Krecher to be proud of himself?"

"Yes." He didn't need a cue for that one, either.  "Yeah." He cleared his throat. "I want you to take care of yourself.  To be comfortable and warm. And - uh. Happy."

Demon made a sound of surprise.  "What?" Harry ducked his head. "Are House Elves not capable of being happy or something?'

"Honestly, Pot - sir.  Sir." The repetition seemed to set Demon more solidly somehow.  "Honestly, I don't know of anyone in the Sacred Twenty-Eight or in their households who thinks about  _ happiness _ on their top list of priorities.  You said that before even  _ clean, _ and the first thing you did with me was give me a bath."

"Were you happier for being clean?" Harry countered.

"Well, yes, of course I was, isn't everyone?"

"I've had my doubts about - well, anyway."  He looked back at Kreacher. The house-elf was - was he  _ smiling? _  That might be what that expression was. 

"Kreacher will serve Master," he declared.  Harry didn't point out that he would do that anyway.  "Kreacher will wear this new -" The house-elf seemed to consider, and then decided "elf-cloth.  Kreacher will try to be comfortable and warm. Thank you, Master. Kreacher did not know Master thought of Kreacher."

Harry noticed that during the last two-third of that speech, the house-elf was looking at Demon, but hey, the creature was also  _ smiling _ .  And it wasn't like he hadn't  _ assigned _ Demon to do just this. 

He cleared his throat. “I do.  I think about you, Kreacher. You’re part of this house.  That makes you part of my responsibility. It might not be what you wanted, and I’m sorry-”

“Kreacher wants to serve.”  The house-elf had  _ interrupted  _  Harry.  He didn’t know if that had ever happened before. “Kreacher wants to serve.  And Kreacher likes -  _ likes _ ?”  He seemed to be testing out the concept.  “Yes. Kreacher likes having things to do and being - being a house-elf this house can be proud of.”  He nodded sharply, clearly proud himself of that speech.

“Thank you, Kreacher.  And thank you for the incense.”  Harry raised his eyebrows at Demon. “Which we are going to-”

“We are going to use it to claim this  room. Here, what’s - no, I know. This table here.”

The table had been cleaned of drink-rings that Harry had been guilty of placing; they had removed a couple ancient magazines that had shouted at them from the pages; the knick knacks that had been sitting on it had been put in a box labelled “for Aurors to check.”

Harry had a feeling it was the cleanest that particular piece of furniture had been since some time in Grindelwald's time. 

Demon set down the incense burner and carefully set the incense in it.  "All right. This is a careful incantation. You want to repeat it four times, one to each cardinal direction - you do know how to tell the directions, right?"

"Of course. I have a compass."

"You have a  _ com...  _ that has to be some sort of Muggle device.  No, no. You want to have it exactly right, so use the Four-Point Spell.  That goes with a sort of gesture like - like this." Demon did a careful gesture with the duster. 

Harry really had to get him a wand.  He repeated the gesture twice in a row.  He’d used this one in the —  _ shit —  _  in the maze.  He had come up with reasons never to use it since.  But Hermione’d had to do some of her Granger-level research to find it.  Demon had just — known it. "How do you  _ know  _ all this?"

"If you'd grown up in the wizarding world like a prop- Merlin's balls."  Demon sat down on the footstool with a whimper. "Oh, Hestia's tits. That was a trap, blast you."

"It wasn't meant as one," Harry protested.  He sat down in the chair. Should he - he reached out towards Demon and then dropped his hands. "Kreacher.  Kreacher, please get Demon a glass of water."

"I thought," Demon managed, though it sounded like the words hurt him, "that the house rule was we got our own drinks."

"It is, generally, but if you're hurt I'll make an exception."

Kreacher popped into existence beside Harry with a glass of water.  He was in his new - his tunic? - and looked properly smart. Cleaner, too, as if he had scrubbed himself.  "Kreacher brings water for the Demon one. Is the Demon one hurt?"

"These things..." Harry muttered.  "There is magic in the bracelets and collar on him, Kreacher.  Here, Demon, here, Kitten. Drink some of this, okay?"

Demon took the glass and sipped it.  

Kreacher moved in until he was up against Demon and sniffed the wrists, then the neck.  Demon held very still. "Aah. That is the nasty magic. That is old stuff. The wand-people should not be using that, they shouldn't."

Harry froze.  He was beginning to think  - no, he was past  _ beginning _ to think by now - that he really hadn't done enough research on these things.  "Nasty magic? Not dark, surely." Not from a house-elf who had loved serving Sirus' mother. 

"Not dark, no.  Dark, light, them are wand-people words.  They are not words of  _ magic _ .  This is magic, this is magic which binds.  The wand-ones love that, but they are not supposed to do it.  Not since what they did to the house-people. Not since what the mine-people did to them.  That was the pact. And now the wand-people, they put this on - on other wand-people..."

"No wand here," Demon muttered.

Harry sighed.  That was enough of that.  "When you're feeling better, go pick out something you're comfortable being seen in public in.  And uh, then maybe you can help me pick out the same. We're going to Diagon Alley."


	9. Multicorfors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey look, a shopping trip!

“Why — why are we going to Diagon Alley?” Demon was searching through the trunk his mother’s house elf had brought, but he looked more panicked than worried or vain. “I mean, if you need things, Kreacher is good at running errands, you just have to tell him how to and what you want. That’s what house-elves are for.  I don’t need to — blast it.” He threw a robe on the floor and huffed at it.

Harry put a hand on his shoulder. “Kitten.”  The pet name had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Now he wasn’t sure, but it did seem to get Demon to relax a little.  “Kitten, this isn’t a punishment. I want to take you to Diagon Alley so that you can get some clothes that are more — uh.” He gestured at the pile. “Clothes that make you happy.”

“Then why did you go through all the effort of having my mother send these?”

“Well, uh. It made her happy and gave me an excuse to call her and make sure she knew how you were doing.  And you, the way I understand this—” He understood it from Gin and, rarely, Hermoine, from Molly and Petunia, but he understood it — “you need something to wear to go to buy something to wear? Something like that?”

Demon snorted. “I guess you do know something.  Urgh. All of this stuff is —”

“Out of fashion?” Harry guessed. 

“Well, probably, but there aren’t exactly  _ Wizard’s Wand _ subscriptions allowed in Azkaban.  No, they’re not me. They’re — they’re  _ Draco _ .”  He winced a little.  “And they’re this would-be-Death-Eater ponce of a kid who didn’t have any idea what real pain or suffering was and just wanted to wallow in being rich.”

Since that was a lot of how Harry had thought of Draco Malfoy, he couldn’t exactly argue.  “Well, they’re certainly not Harry,” he said instead. “Even if they wouldn’t drag on the floor.”

“Actually… Actually.  You said you wanted me to help you find you something that you could wear too?”

“Yeah… I meant out of my closet, though.”

“This…” Demon pulled out a robe in soft blue.  “There was this bet Pansy and I had going that we could find the strangest thing that was currently in fashion…”

“You’re not encouraging me, mate.”

“No, no, hear me out.  The thing is, this is — well, most of my stuff is way too fancy for the way you usually go, I think. I mean, uh.”  He looked suddenly shy. “I could be wrong. Do you maybe like to look all dressed up and just didn’t know how?”

“I honestly don’t have the slightest idea,” Harry admitted.  

“Maybe you’ll let me work on that later.  For now, though, this was one of those, uh, ‘it is fashionable to look as if one works for a living’ sort of things.  So it looks a lot like the sort of things Aurors and curse-breakers wear, but isn’t, well, it has no insignia and it’s not a direct copy.”  He shook the robe out. “I think it would look far better on you than on me, and if you add a bit of plaid at the neck, something in the House tartan — if you don’t have one, you get to make one up, which is far better than the Malfoy or Black family tartans, let me tell you.”  He shuddered artistically. “Better yet, wear one from nobody’s house. You’ll just need to do a little bit of work to get it the right length, since you’re ah—”

“Stunted.  I know.”

Demon flushed. “I didn’t say that!  I didn’t. You’re just a little shorter than me.”

“No, stunted is fine.”  Harry waved his hand. “I am.  ‘Mione’s taller than me now, man, I understand it.  And I read some of her science books, and then I really understood it.”

Demon stared at him. “I don’t.”  The admission sounded worried. 

“I uh.  So if you don’t get enough nutri… you know how I don’t know anything about the wizarding world because I had none of it seeping in growing up?”

“Because you were raised by Muggles…”

“So food is like that, only worse.  Like, Hermione can catch up with knowledge and she probably knows almost as much as you by now.  I can’t catch up on food. I could get fat, but I can’t get taller.”

“But that’s horrible!  Why not?”

“Because being a very small kid is this whole period of your life that is completely different from everything else, and my Muggle family were horrible.”  Harry found the taste in his mouth was bitter and dusty, like ashes. “What do I do to do this thing?”

“All right, it’s Multicorfors.  I don’t do it very often myself, but the wand gesture is like this.”  He demonstrated it twice and then, when Harry was having trouble with it, twice more, with the feather duster.  “My mother never likes what Madame Malkin does with the bodices of her gowns. She says — said, I suppose…. Well, I imagine she still says it, that it may be fashionable to look like one is wearing a sack, but there is no reason to sacrifice style for fashion.”  Even his voice changed. He was clearly quoting Narcissa Malfoy — and he sounded  _ happy _ . 

Harry noticed that he didn’t flinch at all at  _ my mother _ .  He didn’t comment on it, just repeated the spell until his Demon was happy with his pronunciation and then altered the robe in question until Demon was also happy with the fit.

He was, he had a feeling, going to be dressing quite differently if he let Demon have his way.

Of course, that might be a benefit. 

"Demon, while we're out getting stuff for you - I want your help getting something for me, too. "

"More like this?"  Demon looked him up and down. "You carry it better than I do, Potter.  You look like you're - well, you look way too wealthy to be a tradesman."

"Thanks to your - well, anyway."  He cleared his throat. "You heard Hermione, Ron, and I talking.  We need, ah. We need to change the Ministry - don't mention that to anyone, and if you do, I'm going to ... argh."  He couldn't threaten Demon. Not when he knew that the man was probably expecting him to follow through with any threats he made.  "I-"

"I get it.  I won't mention it to anyone.  But you want to look... more like The Boy Who Lived? Less?  More like..."

"Well... I don't know.  I want them to take me seriously, and they don't do that for The Boy Who Lived.  They might for The Man Who Saved All Their Arses, but I didn't get a scar for that, not the second time, and we all know the first one had nothing to do with me."

"It did, I think. Do you really think that my - that Lucius would have stood up against someone like the Dark Lord for  _ me _ ?"

"That..." Harry suddenly felt very stern and very angry.  "That is  _ entirely  _ on Lucius and not on you.  You were a  _ child _ , the same as I was.  Your - that man is..."

"You didn't speak for him, just for my mother and I."  Demon looked at him sideways. "Except you spoke against the Dementor's Kiss or even wand-breaking."

“I don’t think it does any good.  I mean…” He cleared his throat. “I think it’s shitty, to kill people for having made a mistake.  Even one that is very dangerous. I killed Voldemort… but I did that in actual self-defense. Nobody could say that killing Lucius Malfoy after the war was over — or Crabbe or Goyle’s parents, or any of the others — was self-defense.  It would just be more murder. That’s… That’s what I told them. Voldemort killed people. We don’t kill people.”

“Molly Weasley killed Aunt Bella.”  Demon winced. “... Killed Bella LeStrange.”  He huffed a little. “I don’t know how I feel about that.”

“We killed a lot of people during the war.  Too many. I think it runs the risk of tainting us.  I think it - I think we’re already tainted,” he added much more quietly.  “I think this,” he wrapped his hands around Demon’s wrists, around the gold bands there, “I think this is just a sign we’re even more tainted than we thought we were.”

“Tainted.”  He made a face.  “I’d rather be your slave than be in Azkaban.”

“I can tell.  You’re here, and you said they gave you a choice.  I, uh.” Harry cleared his throat. “Should I not have believed that?”

“They gave me a choice.  I mean. They gave me the choice of you or, uh, well, you.  Or Azkaban. I figured I’d be safer with you.” Demon looked down at the gold bands, or maybe at Harry holding his wrists.  “I figured you’d, uh. Well. So far I’ve been mostly right. Clothes.” He shifted like he was going to pluck at his robes, but Harry didn’t want to let go of his wrists yet.  “A place to sleep, food. Uh. A name.” He was still looking down. “Tainted?”

“I think… I think that this is good, but that it could have been really bad, and that we’re setting things up so that we can, what did that Auror say, ‘get some of our own back.’  I think that’s dangerous.”

“If our situations were reversed, I’d probably take the opportunity to kick you while you were down a few times,” Demon admitted.  “You just… keep giving me interesting things to do. And clothes. Food.”

“You said that already.”  Harry pushed Demon’s sleeve up on his right arm and traced the bones there under the skin.  “How bad was-”

“Please don’t ask me that.  Please don’t make me, don’t make me talk about it, okay?  Look, uh. If you can take this robe in a little, we can go to Diagon, or maybe we can just go run around the backyard, or fly, you do have brooms, right?”

Demon was babbling. Harry moved on some sort of instinct that clearly had no basis in self-preservation and wrapped the other man in a hug. “Hey. Hey, listen to me.”

Demon fell quiet.

“Thanks. I won’t make you talk about it. If you need a healer, or medical care, you have to tell me, and if you do that, I won’t make you talk about anything that happened at - in prison, okay? Deal?”

Demon’s swallow was very loud right next to Harry’s ear. “Deal,” he agreed weakly.

“Okay, good.  So, am I going to use that same spell?”

“Yeah…  Yeah. It’s a good tailoring spell.  Are you, are you sure?”

“About what?  I mean, I’m sure we’re going to get you a wand, and that you need clothes that fit, and that if you need a healer, you need to tell me.  I mean, it’s that or trust my diagnostic skills-”

For the first time he could remember, Harry was actively fishing for this particular person to insult him.  He got a sort of half-hearted snort. 

“I’d much rather trust Granger.  But she’s not here right now. Uh.  I might… Can I tell you later?”

“You can tell me later.  Let me see what I can do.”  He had to release Demon to do the spell, but when he did, Demon seemed to fold in on himself.  “Okay, come on. Stand up, chin up. There. You don’t have to smile or anything but even I know that if you slouch the outfit will fit wrong.”

“Not if you’re  _ always  _ slouching.”  Still, Demon stood up a little bit straighter and then, after another heartbeat, even straighter. “Is this better?”

“That’s better.”  Harry shook out his wand a few times, getting the feel for it, and then cast the spell.  The robes, as he had pictured, enveloped Demon in a much more fitting way, while still hiding exactly how skinny the man was.  “There. You look like - well, not really like your old self, but like you're ready to face Diagon Alley.”

“Lies,” Demon muttered, but a look at himself in the hall mirror seemed to satisfy him. “I say, Potter, if being idle rich doesn’t work out, you could always get a job as a tailor.  You’ve got an eye for it.”

“Years of wearing clothes that were too big for me.  I know what they’re supposed to look like.” Harry hesitated. “That’s one reason I hate robes.  They look too big even when they fit right.”

“We;’re just going to have to change the fashion, then.”  The smile Demon gave him was a little bit playful. Harry found himself both surprised and a bit nervous.  “Shall we, sir? Diagon Alley is calling.”

“Let’s.”  He offered Demon his hand, scooped the Floo powder with his free hand, and they were off. 


	10. mens tenetur

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A shopping trip! How… Exciting?

He still hated Floo travel, but it was the easiest way to get places without getting into some of the strange regulations concerning apparating.  He did  _ not  _ squeeze Demon’s hand, any more than he squeezed Ginny’s when he went through with her.  That would be silly. It would be - well, kind of ridiculous for the Boy Who Lived, wouldn’t it?

He brushed himself off one-handed. “All right.  Down to Ollivander’s first, and then we’ll move on. How are you feeling?”

“Feeling?   _ Feeling _ ?”  Demon stared at him.  “I’m panicking, how do you think I’m feeling?”

“Oh hey,” Harry smiled crookedly, “you  _ are  _ human.  Come on, then.”  He didn’t let go of Demon’s hand until they were in the busiest shop area, and then he put a hand on his shoulder instead.  He didn’t know why. It wasn’t like the man was going to run off of something. As far as Harry could tell, Demon  _ couldn’t  _ run off.  Not with the way he tended to stick to Harry’s side like a burr. 

Once they stepped into Ollivander’s shop, Harry began to doubt this whole plan.  Draco’s family had held Mr. Ollivander prisoner. They had tortured him. And here he was, waltzing in with the youngest Malfoy like he could just, what?  Buy forgiveness?

Demon, however, had clearly thought this through a little better than Harry had, or he had a better feeling for such things.  Since he'd always had a flair for the dramatic, Harry was willing to chalk it up to the latter. 

He fell down to his knees the moment they were inside the store.  "Mr. Ollivander, I want to beg forgiveness for the things my - urgh.  The Malfoy family did to you."

The old man looked at Demon, then at Harry.  "Stand up, boy."

Uncertainly, Demon stumbled to his feet. 

"You're not a Malfoy right now.  That's what those things do. It’s the nature of the  _ mens tenetur _ , whatever they’ve done to it — you’re no longer Draco Malfoy.  Correct?”

"I- I no.  I'm uh. I'm Demon, of House Potter."

"Then you have nothing to apologize for.  And even if you were still Draco Malfoy... you were a child.  I don't hold children to fault for the ills of the world. I," he added very quietly, "am not Albus Dumbledore."

The two of them were silent for a moment, uncomfortable.  Then Harry cleared his throat and took Demon's arm gently.  "Thank you, Mr. Ollivander, sir. Thank you," he repeated, because he wasn't sure what he was supposed to say.  Then he remembered why they were here. "Dr- Demon lost his wand in - in the war. And he needs another one."

"I was given to understand that the probation-slaves had their wands taken away from them."  Mr. Ollivander raised his eyebrows at Harry. In challenge? Something like that, although he looked amused, too. 

"They might have, if they hadn't had them taken away already.  But Demon hasn't done anything to have his magic stripped away."  Harry lifted his chin. "As far as this goes, Demon of House Potter hasn't done anything wrong at all.  And since he's serving House Potter, it would be useful for him to be able to cast basic spells on his own.  Since he has a, um,"  _ what would Hermione say? _  "A great wealth of knowledge of spells that I don't have."

"Indeed?  Well, I'm not one to let knowledge vanish, I never have been.  And even if he still had his old wand, he might need a new one.  The wand picks the wizard, mmm? But this wizard is not the same one that came in here to get his wand originally."

Demon shifted.  “I’m still the same person.  I still have all the same memories, and the same, uh.  Essence. The same,” he picked at his arm, “blood.”

Wizards did not, as far as Harry knew, think too much about genetics, for all that they talked about pureblood and half-blood and so on.  It wasn’t based in science, because wizards, as Hermione liked to go on and on about, did not care one whit for science. A Muggle might have said ‘I’ve got the same DNA.’  Demon probably had never heard of it and might think it was some sort of spell. 

Ollivander looked Demon up and down.  “No. You are the same person in some ways, yes.  You grew from that person. But you shed him along the way, I think, and his old wand would no longer suit you.  So let us see what we can do. I’ve been doing a little experimenting lately - some of my old materials are completely restricted now, and some are just very hard to get. So what I can provide has, as a matter of course, changed.  So, hrrm, hrrm.” 

It took Ollivander and Demon eight boxes to come up with something that satisfied the ancient wandmaker.  In the end, Demon was the new owner of a dogwood wand. It was just over ten inches long with a core of salamander claw. 

“This should do a demon well, I think.  But be careful. This one is a bit temperamental.  It may bite you if it doesn’t like what you’re doing.”

“Rather like Demon,” Harry teased. A moment later, he was wondering why he’d said something like that.

“Rather like me," Demon agreed, far more cheerfully than Harry had expected. 

"There."  Ollivander beamed.  "That is quite a nice pairing, I think, as long as you're careful."  

For a moment, Harry wasn't sure if he meant Harry with Demon or Demon with his wand.  He cleared his throat and pulled out his money pouch.

"No, no charge for The Boy Who Lived, of course not."

"How about for a guy and his Demon?" Harry countered.  "Come on, Diagon Alley could use the business. We all know things were slow for ages after the end of the war."

"Well, when you put it that way, I suppose my front sign does need refreshing and it is good to have customers.  Certainly." Ollivander named a price that seemed low but not horribly so, and Harry paid and accepted his change with as much grace as he could.

"No wonder." Demon waited 'till they were out of the store and on the street, but it didn't make his voice sound any less barbed, "you can live off your savings, when nobody wants to charge you."

"I inherited," Harry answered quietly. Very quietly.  He let it hang in the air  _ who _ he'd inherited from, and why, although it wasn't kind. 

"Damnit, Potter.  Can't a man even be shirty with you without you turning into Saint Potter? It's enough to make a man want to bleed out his eyeballs."

Harry started to retort, actually had his mouth open, and huffed, shutting his mouth. "You're welcome."  

It was a stupid thing to say but, as it turned out, it was the right thing.  Demon huffed  _ again  _ and touched the wand in its holster.  "Thanks," he muttered. "Are you going to let me use it?"

"Not to cut yourself," Harry answered in a low voice.  "But yeah. Stupid of me to not have you have one. You're better at this stuff than I am, anyway."

"Says the man who defeated Voldemort."

“I didn’t… look, it’s a long story, shit, don’t panic,  He’s dead, I promise you. I killed him, he’s dead, oh, damnit, Demon…” because Demon had turned paler than Harry had ever seen him and had started to crumple.  He wrapped his arm around Demon and pulled him close to him, not thinking about anything except  _ shit, he’d just broken Malfoy.  “ _ Hey. Hey, come on.  Look at me, please?”

Demon looked up at him almost-unwillingly. 

“There you go.  Okay. So, yes.”  He kept his voice low.  “I promise I’ll tell you the whole story when we’re home, all right?  Yes, he’s dead. Yes, I killed him, I was there, and I defeated him in battle.  But that whole thing - Neville killed the snake. Hermione and Ron got me there.  Your - Narcissa Malfoy covered for me when I was lying there on the ground. I didn’t defeat him, I was just the wand at the end of things.”

By the time he was done, Demon was standing up in his arms.  Pressed against him. Looking him in the eye - or at least sort of looking down at his face.  He really  _ was _ taller than Harry. “That is the most complete load of rubbish that I have ever heard,” he declared, so concisely and clearly that every word seemed to poke into Harry’s skin like tiny knives.  “ _ You _ killed Voldemort.   _ You _ had the strength to defeat him in battle.  Sure, other people helped. But you did it in the end.”

Harry opened his mouth to protest. 

Somewhere down the street someone cried out “ _ Is that Draco Malfoy?  With  _ **_Harry Potter?”_ **

Demon winced.  Harry slipped to one side of him and put an arm around his waist companionably.  “Come on,” he murmured. “Let’s go get some new robes.”

It wasn’t going to help, he knew.  There were going to be people talking.  There were going to be people  _ shouting. _  He was going to have to Floo Ginn before the papers started screaming about him having some sort of  _ secret affair _ with The Scion Of Evil. 

“Harry Potter.”  It wasn’t Rita Skeeter, but that’s about all he could say for the woman in front of him with the lurid quill.  “Do you have something to say to our readers?” She looked Demon up and down. “And is this Draco Malfoy here in your arms?  What would Miss Weasley say about that?”

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” Harry told her, before he could think about what he was saying. “This is Demon; he works for House Potter.  I think Miss Weasley’s words are likely to be something along the lines of ‘about bloody time.’ I mean, the house I’m living in really does need a, um, a magical touch.”

“And you’re not enough of a magical touch?”

“What Mr. Potter means to say,” Demon slipped in, as smoothly as if he hadn’t just been freaking out, “is that he was kind enough to take me in when the Ministry of Magic decided that I needed a new life and a new guardian, and he’s kind enough to pretend that I know things that he doesn’t.  After all, the Savior of the Wizarding World, the Man who Killed Voldemort, doesn’t  _ need  _ someone like me.”

For the first time, he said it without irony or sarcasm tinging his voice.  Harry was a little impressed. 

The reporter turned on Demon.  “And Harry introduced you as  _ Demon _ ?  But you are, surely, Draco Malfoy?  An interesting pet name, maybe?”

Demon didn’t so much as flinch. “I don’t know how much you know about the Ministry’s new Reconstruction project,” he began, with a very subtle, almost invisible glance at Harry.  “But no, I am not Draco Malfoy. As a matter of fact, I will probably never be Draco Malfoy again. If you asked anyone who bore a resemblance to a child of a Death Eater, you might get a similar answer - and I suggest that manners would dictate that you accept that answer on face value until you have done your research, which I am fairly certain that, to date, you haven’t.”

The woman looked a little bit offended.   _ Good _ , thought Harry, and didn’t feel the least bad about it.  He gestured towards Malkin’s, which was past the reporter.  “We have some errands we’re trying to run.”

“So,” Demon picked up, “If you’ll excuse us, we’ll just be going now.  Oh, I suggest you look at, what was it again, sir? Ministry Document-?”

Harry knew this one.  “R-317, sections B through F in particular.  Thank you.” He started walking, heading directly towards Madame Malkin’s and letting the reporter get out of the way or not, as she so chose. 

As it happened, she decided getting out of the way was the best idea, although she was still calling after them - Harry had stopped listening - as the shop door closed behind them. 

Madame Malkin looked them up and down. “Well.  I can see why you’ve come to me. If you’ll give me just five minutes - I have a young student here - then we can handle everything you so obviously need, Mr. Potter, and - everything your  _ associate _ needs as well.”

“That’s fine.”  Harry flopped into one of the chairs that Madam Malkin kept for occasions like this.  “We’ll stay out of the way until then.”


	11. Potions of Health

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I should make you my, uh, what do famous people call them?”  
> “Generally paramour,” Demon joked.  
> ~*~

Harry looked over at Demon and touched his shoulder gently. “Are you okay?”

“You handled that better than I thought you could, Potter -” Demon cleared his throat “-sir.  Usually any meeting you have with the press seems to be a disaster.”

“I hate them,” Harry muttered, “and they know it.”

“How could they not?  The problem is, that makes them think that you’ve got something to hide, when the truth might just be that you don’t like being treated like their personal whipping boy.  So…” He shrugged. “I gave them something to look into. Me, for one - since everyone loves to hate a Death Eater, and I can’t really complain about that - and then this whole Ministry Department of Reconstruction thing for another, which ought to keep her busy at least for a few minutes.  She’ll have to find someone who will answer questions, I suppose.” He yawned. “I haven’t had a chance to do that in some time. I forgot that I liked it.”

“I should make you my, uh, what do famous people call them?”

“Generally  _ paramour _ ,” Demon joked. “You already said no to that.  No, no.” He held up his hands. “I’m not an idiot, Potter.  We had that conversation. Mmm, I read this Muggle magazine - don't look so shocked, it has been known to happen on rare occasion - but they called them  _ press secretaries.   _ I could be your secretary, though that's unlikely to dissuade people from thinking that you're screwing me."

Harry snorted.  "Secretary. It gives me something to tell people that isn't  _ paramour _ and won't make Hermione frown at me.  I don't think it will, at least."

"We could try it.  Does she do that a lot? Frown at you?  I can't imagine anyone else spending a lot of time frowning at the savior of the wizarding world."

"Well, you've done enough of it for any five or six people," Harry joked.  "Yeah. Hermione frowns at me. Generally when I'm doing something she thinks is stupid, which, well, she's bloody brilliant, so it's kind of a low bar. Sometimes just when she thinks I'm, uh."  He gestured vaguely. "I don't know, honestly. Wasting my potential or something."

"Because you're doing nothing with your life but being idle rich?  I can't imagine someone like Granger disapproving of that." Demon rolled his eyes. 

"Oy!  I'm not  _ doing nothing with my life _ , thank you!  Just because I decided I didn't want to spend the next twenty years on the front lines being an Auror -" he dropped his voice down to a mutter.  "Or any of the other careers where people wanted The Savior, Thank You Very Much. The stuff Hermione and I are doing..." He trailed off and huffed.  "How many years, and you can still bait me."

“I believe I got an O in my  _ Bothering Harry Potter  _ N.E.W.T.”  Demon smirked.  “So are you? Wasting your potential, that is?” 

“Some days I think so.   Some days I don’t know what my potential is supposed to be, anyway.  I mean, what am I good at? Not dying, mostly. Or dying but not all the way, I guess.  I didn’t have time for a lot of other stuff in school.”

“You know - I seem to remember something about an illegal Defense class. First-year Quidditch player.  Tri- sorry.” He shut up, and then just as quickly started again. “I’m just saying, Potter, I think the problem is that you don’t think.”

“Thanks.”  Harry rolled his eyes.  Demon  _ must _ be relaxing.  

“No, I mean.  Uh.” He flapped a hand.  “Like, you get stuck thinking of  _ yourself _ as just like, The Kid Who Fought The War.  And don’t get me wrong, that was bloody amazing and these tossers don’t give you nearly enough credit.  But even when you were nearly dying every year, you weren’t, uh,  _ just _ dying.  There were other things.”

“What about you?”  It was the only thing Harry could think of to say that might get rid of the weird feeling between his shoulders. 

“Me?”  Demon held up his gold-wrapped wrists.  “I think you know what I’m doing with my life, Potter.”

“Not what I meant.  I mean, this isn’t forever-”

Demon snorted.  “Oh, is that what they told you?”

“What?” Harry sat up straighter and stared at Demon. “ _ What?” _

_ “ _ Keep your voice down now, come on,” Demon chivvied, “ _ shh _ . Don’t shout, you’ll have everyone over here And then they’ll all see you freaking out and it will be a crisis. They really didn’t tell you?”

“’Until you’ve paid your debt,’” Harry quoted, trying to be quiet.  “Which isn’t supposed to be  _ forever _ .  I mean, it was never said, but they suggested, uh.  They suggested a few years. Mentions were made to the fact that we didn’t have kids yet, Gin and I,” he added, much, much quieter, as if whispering it would keep it from hurting Demon’s feelings.

“Oh, so you weren’t risking your children with a -”  He shook his head. “Kind of sensible of them, with some of the people they decided were safe for ‘probation.’”

“But - But it’s not a few years?”  Harry hated the way he sounded, like he was asking for reassurance.  

“Well, look, you could probably take me back in a few years if you were sick of me or something, but the feeling they gave me was that the only way to really ‘repay my debt’ was to scrub it off with all my blood.  I mean. These things aren’t meant to come off.” He rubbed at his wrists. “So they definitely gave  _ me _ the impression it was forever.”

“I’m not going to  _ take you back!”  _ Harry struggled to keep his voice quiet, but his fists were clenched in his lap. “Like, what, a pair of trousers that doesn’t fit?”

“You’re probably used to that, being -” Demon faltered.

Harry chuckled anyway. “-stunted, yeah.  No, I’m just really good at the trousers-shortening charm. And sleeves-shortening, but at least having my sleeves long isn’t quite such a mess.”  He mimed pushing up his sleeves. “You’re right. I’m pretty good at returns, but that’s not happening.”

“Ah, boys.”  Madam Malkin bustled back to them.  “Err, gentlemen. Mr. Potter and - oh, I see. So it wouldn’t be Mr. Malfoy then, would it?”

“This is Demon, of House Potter, Madam Malkin.”  Harry was going to get really good at this by the time they were done shopping.  

“I see.  Pleased to meet you, Demon.  And what can I do for House Potter?”

“Well, I need-” Harry faltered.  “That is, Demon, why don’t you explain?”

As far as he could tell, Demon proceeded to do just that, but there were so many terms he didn’t understand in the conversation that they might as well have been speaking Greek.   It resulted in Madam Malkin measuring both of them, tutting at Harry, then tutting at Harry  _ again _ . 

“You’re going to put some meat on his bones, aren’t you?  And your own. Seriously, Mr. Potter!”

Yes, yes ma'am," he stumbled, "yes, of course, I mean, this is - this is what I weigh?  But I'm going to make sure Demon gains a little weight."

"Both of you, Mr. Potter, both of you.  Just because you cover it with a robe does not mean that you do not need to work on your physique.  Demon, I put it on you to make certain that he does a little light exercise and gets some fresh air at least three times a week."

"I'm not an  _ invalid _ ," Harry protested.

"No, I imagine not, but you're also not doing as well as you should be.  You are not at war anymore, Mr. Potter. Start paying attention to this body.  And you  _ will _ come back for another fitting in six months, and I  _ will  _ see improvement in both of you.  Understood?"

"Yes, uh, yes, ma'am.  Demon? If you're going to be my social secretary, remember that we're coming back in six months."  

That could get easy way too fast, he realized.  Demon smirked at him. 

"And make sure you get fresh air and a walk three times a week, yes, sir.  Maybe I'll tell -" he faltered for just a second - "Granger that you need to gain weight.  I'm sure she'll come up with something."

"Oy, no, don't do that, she'll never let it go.  All right, all right." He threw up his hands. "I'll put on some muscle.  Now can we have robes?"

"There's no need to be like that," Madam Malkin tutted.  "Now, let me see. I have a few things in stock that I could fit to you.  And then I have a few ideas, if you'll come back in a week? For some other things, oh, this could be quite entertaining, the two of you could make quite a nice set, and if you could get Miss Weasley in here as well...?"

"Gin should be on a break soon, and we can bring her in here when we come to pick things up in a week," Harry reassured her.  "I make no promises about what she'll wear or won't wear, though. She does her own thing."

"I can probably - maybe - possibly convince her," Demon offered shyly.  'If I can transfigure one of my old robes into something that will look really flattering on her, then maybe she can see what proper tailoring can do..." he trailed off.  "I'll need to work on the phrasing, of course."

Harry snorted.  “Probably,” he agreed. 

“Hrrm, no old robes,” Madam Malkin tutted.  “They look fine on you the way you’ve worked them up, but let me see.  All right. You two sit tight and I’ll be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

“Yes, ma’am.”  Harry glanced out the window at Diagon Alley.  There was a flash of red hair - Ron, maybe? Could be Percy.  Could, he supposed, be a completely unrelated red-head; it  _ was _ known to happen - but nobody he actually recognized. With a sigh, he flopped back into his chair. 

“Stuck with me a little longer,” Demon quipped.  “I suppose you ought to get used to my company eventually, Potter.”

“You must be feeling better.”  Harry smirked back at him, not particularly bothered.  “You’re back to calling me Potter.” Before Demon could either complain, retort, or apologize - he wasn’t sure which would be more mortifying - Harry elbowed him lightly in the (very bony; Madam Malkin was right) ribs.  “Why don’t you pull out that new wand and see what you can do?”

“Are you mad?   _ Me _ , with a wand out, in  _ public? _  There might be a riot.”

Harry pulled his out and cast a simple  _ Lumos _ .  “I’m here.  I’m clearly supervising you.  You’re also clearly wearing your - uh.”

“Shackles.  Fine. Fine, if it will keep you from getting that horribly bored and lonely sad-dog look on you face, I will risk being hung as a traitor and drawn and quartered by a mob.”

Demon was every bit as melodramatic as he had been as a first-year, Harry thought, and then found himself saying “Anyone who wants to hurt you is going to have to come through me.”

Well, Demon wasn’t the only one with the flare for the dramatic.  He huffed at himself and practiced a small silent _ Wingardium Leviosa _ . 

“Show-off.”  Demon pulled the wand from its sheath reverently and gave it a light flight.  “Lumos!”

The magic didn’t have to ask Harry about Lumos spells after the first, so it went off without a hitch.  Which gave Harry an idea. “Why don’t you run through all of the spells that you might need and are reasonable to do here so that I can approve them - anything that’s okay to approve, of course-”

“Of course.  Wouldn’t want me to-”

“-cut yourself,” Harry added, his voice low but his tone as casual as he could fake.  “Or something like that.”

“Hrumpph.”  Sulk aside, Demon toko Harry’s advice. By the time Madam Malkin appeared with their robes, they had gone through a good number of spells and had, much to Harry’s pleasure, given Demon quite a bit more freedom to cast his own magic. 

It made Harry a little nervous - doing all this magic in public when, as Ollivander had said, most parole-slaves had been relieved of their wands - and so he found himself lifting his eyebrows a bit suspiciously when where were potions on top of the tidy pile of robes. 

“Potions of Health.”  Her smile was firm. “Two-thirds of them are for him.  The rest are for you. They will help regenerate the body that he’s lost, and for you, they’ll help you get into some sort of reasonable shape.  They’ll also stimulate the appetite and give you an urge to do things that are physical - go flying, toss a ball around, go for a run. Get active.  I insist on it.” She patted him on the shoulder. “It’ll do you both good - and some sunlight. Proper sunlight, you hear, not a spell. The spells never quite do it right.”

“Yes, ma’am.”  What else was Harry going to say.  “Did you get all of that, Demon?”

“Yes, sir.”  Demon looked more overwhelmed even than Harry felt.  “Exercise, sunlight, and potions. Thank you, Madam Malkin.”

“The pleasure is all mine.  Now! I hope to see Miss Weasley when we see you again, Mr. Potter, Demon.”

Thus dismissed, Harry - making sure Demon was following - headed for the nearest Floo. 


	12. Floo Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Wild Ginny Appears!

Back in the safety of Grimmauld Place, Harry flopped on the floor of the sitting room, packages to one side of him and Demon to the other.  “I don’t remember shopping being so — ridiculous.”

“When’s the last time you went to Diagon Alley?”  Demon pried himself halfway into a sitting position and then flopped back to the floor.  “Kreacher? Some tea, if you don’t mind, for the master. And me.”

“Oh, uh, I went to Flourish and Botts a couple times with Hermione but mostly she was angry at everything.  I think she’s going to start a public wizarding library if she ever gets the time.”

A public library?"  Demon raised his eyebrows. "Is that a Muggle thing?"

"It is, actually. I used to spend time in our local public library when I could —" He hesitated, then decided he had less to lose telling Demon than he did keeping more secrets.  "Uh. When I could get away from the Dursleys. That's the family I lived with, after my - after my parents were killed. My mother's sister and her husband and son."

Demon twisted his face up.  "Muggles, you said?"

"Muggles," he agreed, and then added, more quietly, "Muggles who knew about magic and hated it.  My Aunt Petunia, I think she was jealous of my mother, and my uncle, he didn't want anything that was 'weird' in his house.  They — so sometimes," he pulled himself back to the topic, "if I had a reason to leave the house, I'd go to the public library and spend hours there.  I bet Hermione did, just because there were so many books, too. So we both like the idea — and there's nothing like that in the Wizarding World right now, as far as we've been able to tell."

"I've never heard of anything like it. Every old family has their own library, we—"  He winced and caught himself. "—my, err. The Malfoy Manor has an extensive selection.  I bet there's a decent selection here, if — it — if it—"

"If Sirius didn't burn it up or the Weaslies didn't turn it in to the Ministry for being full of dark magic?" Harry offered.  

"That's pretty much what I was thinking."  He flopped back to the floor. "So a public library.  How does she have time to sleep?"

"She told me," Harry joked — well, repeated a joke — "that's she trying to figure out a way to sleep with her eyes open through the worst of the meetings she ends up in."

"Oh, I can tell her that one.  We used to use it in Binns' class.  It's a pretty easy charm but, obviously, they don't teach it at Hogwarts."

Harry snorted. “Seriously?  The Slytherins have a charm for that?”

“Of course we do!  And a few other things.  Like the Ravenclaws, we take turns taking notes in classes that are mostly lecture-based.  Things like that. The Griffindorks don’t?”

His smile might have been smug, but it was playful, so Harry drew himself up into the best caricature of Gryffindor he could manage. “The  **_bravest_ ** thing one could do in the face of sheer, unmitigated boredom is to  _ actually listen!” _

“And Granger wants a charm to fall asleep instead.  I always knew she was the smart one.”

“Yep.”  Harry didn’t even bother pretending to be insulted.  He grinned instead. “She’s brilliant, she is. She’s going to change the world.  The rest of us are just doing the best we can to keep up with her.”

“Sounds like you’re half in love with her.”

“Oh, more than half.”  Harry waved his hand as soon as the words were out.  “But not like  _ that _ .  We work well as a team, the three of us and the six of us, and  _ that _ is bloody brilliant.  I never thought I’d be lucky enough to have friends like them, Hermione and Ron, Neville and Luna — and Gin.”  He knew he was getting a little soppy, but he couldn’t help himself. “Seriously, for the skinny kid in the cupboard who had no friends, I did pretty well for myself.”

“In the—”  Demon sat up straight as the Floo came to life.  

“Harry?"

Harry sat up, too, grinning.  "Gin! Ginny!" He hopped to his feet. "You're not due back for days yet!"

"I can go, if you want," she teased.  He could see her face coming through the fire now, her wide grin. 

"Don't you dare!  Come on through!"

"I only have an hour."  She stepped through the fireplace, hand reaching out to him.  "But Maggie owed me a favor and the place we're staying has a really nice floo fireplace so - here I am."  She hugged him tightly as she finished pulling herself out of the fireplace. 

"Here you are."  He spent a moment breathing in the scent of her hair and soaking up the way she felt in his arms.  "Only an hour?"

He wanted to — he wanted to take her out in their favorite patch of sun in the back yard and roll around until they were both covered in grass.  He wanted to ask her  _ everything  _ about her month — letters weren't enough, no matter how much they kept the owls flying — and tell her  _ everything _ about his. 

Everything — including Demon.  He froze. 

"Hello, Demon."  Ginny seemed to read his mind.  She pulled back from him just enough to look over at the demon in question, who looked as if he was trying to be invisible without casting any magic.

"Gin," Harry began, and then stopped. "You already knew?"

"I talked to Percey and he'd talked to George and George had talked to Mum and Ron and Hermione had told Mum.  Demon's a good name. And I talked to George and P-word and-”

“P-word?”  Demon looked a little nauseated.

“Oh, um.  Pansy, but not.  George comes up with a new name for her every day, and sometimes she comes up with her own.  She was Portia when I went over there. I don’t know why,” she added on quickly, “but she doesn’t seem to mind.  It’s just… you know, George makes jokes?” By the last bit, she sounded more cajoling than certain. Harry hugged her again.  

Demon huffed quietly and looked at Harry.  “I think two names is enough for me.”

“I agree.  I’d just get confused if I tried to call you something different every time I saw you.”

“Two?”  Ginny looked between the two of them.  Harry found that he couldn’t quite look her in the eye. 

Demon snorted. “He called me  _ Kitten _ when I first got here, but when Granger and - uh - your brother Ron were here, he decided I was  _ Demon _ for public.  I think I like it better anyway.  I don’t really want to be  _ kitten  _ in front of Granger.  Or Weasley. I mean…” He flapped a hand.  “Why are there so many of you?”

“Just wait.  Bill and Fleur already have two, Percy is - well, we’ll see, but I’m better I see some out of him some time soon.  George is getting pretty chummy with Pan - P-word, and Ron and Hermione… well, you know.” She looked  _ wicked _ .  “In a few years, there’s going to be exponentially more Weaslies.  And then what will you do?”

“Call them all  _ sir _ .” Demon made a face.  “Right, I suppose I should - go work on my duties and such to give you two a little bit of time, no?”

“Wait, Demon.”  Harry reached over and grabbed Demon's shoulder lightly.  "Gin, I, uh." He cleared his throat. This shouldn't be so  _ hard _ .  He and Ginny had talked about this, in theory. 

In theory.  

It had never  _ really  _ come up in practice before. 

He cleared his throat and was going to start, but Damon beat him to it.   Bowing. 

"I wanted to be grateful — no.  I wanted to  _ show _ my gratitude, because Lord Potter showed me  — showed me kindness when he could have shown me cruelty.  And I slipped into his bed and, ah, attempted to show my gratitude." Demon managed to say it without blushing.  Harry was impressed.  _ He _ was already blushing. 

"But," Demon continued, "Lord Potter  — ha -— Lord  _ Saint _ Potter told me that he wouldn't do something like that without discussing it with you first."

That was enough that Harry felt like he could explain, like the ice had been broken. He cleared his throat again.  

"I know that we talked about adding someone to our relationship before." He looked straight at Ginny.  She was watching him like she didn't mind making him squirm through this. Of course she didn't. 

"And I know — I know that we had some ideas.  But, but the way it sounds, Demon is going to be with me, with us, for a long time.  And — it turns out I kind of like him."

"Harry, a blind hermit could have told you that by fifth year.  Maybe third. And that talking with George and P-word, he's going to want to be close to you all the time if he can.  We could — I _think_ — re-attune his, um, probation so that it included me, too, but that would probably be cruel."

"Cruel?" Demon looked worried, fairly so, Harry thought.  This was not going any of the ways he'd thought it might.

"So you might have noticed that the collar thing comes with this... pressing need to be near the person holding the bond?"

Harry cleared his throat.  "Yeah — yes. Demon has been sleeping in my bed."

"And that makes sense.  To be honest, I don't know why they'd do that.  It seems pretty ridiculous with some of the other things they've said."  Ginny frowned. "Maybe Luna knows. Luna's good at figuring those things out.  But — I'm away a lot. So having Demon want to be near me, that wouldn't be nice." She looked over the two of them.  "So. You want — you want to bring Demon into our relationship. How does Demon — how do you feel about this, Demon?"

Both of them looked at Demon.  He shifted, like he was trying to get comfortable, and huffed quietly.  "I don't know you," he admitted quietly. "I don't know  _ either _ of you, but Pot— Harr — Lord Potter has been very — he's been kind, and he had no reason to and didn't have to.  And I don't think that it was third year, I," he faked a cough and looked away, "didn't notice it 'till forth, when Blaise kept hexing me for talking about ... Lord Potter."

"I don't know you either."  Ginny looked Demon up and down.  "But are you going to have an issue with getting to know a  _ blood traitor _ ?"

"Even- even if I could say those things.  I don't  _ think...  _ I think a lot of that was stupid Dark - stupid Voldemort?" He tested the word.  "Stupid Death-eater rhetoric." A little flinch was followed by a sign of relief.  “It — look. I—” He huffed. 

Harry thought it might be time to rescue him.  “Gin, you know the collar stops him from saying certain things?”

“Like accepting his name.  Or calling his family his family.  Ron was horrified by that.” Ginny nodded and tilted her head at Demon.  “Is it stopping you from saying you think I’m less than you?”

“No!  I mean.”  He huffed again and put his face in his hands.  “I don’t think everything was wrong,” he muttered into his fingers.  He followed that with a little grunt. “And sometimes your brother — sometimes  _ Ron _ is an idiot.  But — but you’re…”  he groaned softly. “Beautiful and skilled and  _ tough _ and, and the magic is important, not the blood behind it?” he tried.  He peered up at them cautiously. “Besides,” he offered, almost panting, “you’re both my cousins if you look at the right trees.”

Harry wrapped an arm around Demon and pulled him close so that he could pet his hair.  He was only mildly surprised to find Ginny doing the same. Much of what he’d learned about touching other people in a familial way, he’d learned from the Weasleys.  “Thank you for explaining,” he murmured. “That can’t have been easy.”

“I wanted — it was a fair question.”  He rubbed his wrists ruefully, pushing the gold shackles up and down.  “I was a prat to you, both of you, in school. And now, uh. Now you can be as much of a shit to me as you want and the Ministry will encourage it.”

Ginny tapped Demon’s nose.  “So. Are you going to have an issue with me?”

“What?  Didn’t I say-”  he lowered his head and muttered something Harry couldn’t follow.  A moment later, he looked up, his cheeks red. “You’re beautiful and talented, I said that.  And clearly your family saved up most of the brains from the middle children for you. And, uh, you have good taste in boyfriends?”  He turned an even deeper, mottled red. “No. I won’t have an issue with you. Will you have, uh. have an issue, oh, Merlin, this is really happening.”

Harry squeezed him tighter. “Sorry to spring this on you.”

“I’m the one that crawled into your bed!”  Demon's blush, if anything, darkened. "I mean- shit.  Shit." He scrubbed at his face with both hands. "I — you mean it, don't you?  You're not, uh." He cleared his throat. "You don't just want me as a pet. You wouldn't care if, if I cared if you were — about your blood — if you wanted a toy."

"The only situations I know those terms in—"  Harry picked his words carefully, because he didn't want to shout and Ginny already looked like she might.  "—aside from, you know, a pet cat, a um, kid's toy, is kink. And that, um. That's a different discussion."

"But sort of part of the same one, too," Ginny put in.  "Harry's not asking permission to rape you, Demon, Kitten.  He's not giving  _ me _ permission to use you like that either.  That's what you mean, right?"

Demon held up his wrists, with the gold shackles.  "Is it even rape?" he asked dully. 

"It would be.  Yes. And that's not what we're suggesting.  More like..." It was her turn to consider her words carefully, and her eyes were on Harry the whole time.  "A subordinate - no. Submissive partner in a three-way relationship."

"Submissive," Harry agreed quietly, "but with choice.  As much choice as those things will let you have, at least."

Demon swallowed.  "I thought we were asking Gin - Miss Weasley - not me."

"I accept if you accept — though I have a caveat."

"Do I get to know what that is before I accept?"

"Nope."  She had the same grin she wore when she had just done something brilliant at Quidditch. 

"Of course not."  Demon sighed. "I — I think you're both insane.  I mean, I'm—" He waved his bracelets at them. "You don't have to invite me into your relationship.  Submissive partner or not."

Harry found it rather interesting how much Demon blushed when he said  _ submissive _ , and how he kept looking down. 

"No, we don't," Ginny agreed.  "But on the other hand, when Harry and I worked everything out — for real, when we both realized we were really going to live past twenty — that was a bit of a shocker —"

"Tell me about it," Demon muttered. 

"Yeah, I think — I think a lot of us that survived felt that, but I bet you had it bad."  She patted his shoulder. "Harry and I — when we managed to calm down, we discussed things.  And one of them was, we might not be  _ just the two of us _ , but we were always going to be doing things in a fair and honest way.  So. We're going to do things in a fair and honest way with you."

Demon closed his eyes.  "It's contagious," he muttered.  "Being a freaking saint must be a sexually transmitted disease.  I can't have sex with you, Potter, you'll turn me into one of you."

“Well,” Ginny purred, “I can think of worse fates.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my friends!  
> I am going to try something for the first week of May.  
> For any fanfic of mine on which I am the sole creator,   
> for every substantive comment I receive, I will open that doc and write 200-300 more words of that fic.   
> Once I get a chapter written (or in some cases, a sequel), I’ll post it.
> 
> For this ‘fic, that’s about 2500 words or 10 comments.


	13. Sealed With a Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exactly what it says on the tin

“Well?”  Ginny tilted her head. 

Demon tilted his head back at her. “Well?”

“Well, do you accept?”

“I didn’t already — Merlin’s knob, I didn’t already.”  He put his hands over his face. “I’m not just going to turn into a saint, I’m going to be an idiot and a saint.  You people and pretending I have some sort of free will, it’s going to be the death of me.

“Well—”  Harry wasn’t sure why he kept going, but his mouth did that sometime.  Before Ginny and Demon could more than tense up, he flapped his hand. “It’s just that if you’re right, if you're going to be here for — for the rest of your natural life, then I guess we’ll be there for your death, too.  Unless you outlive us, which — which I suppose is a possibility.” He coughed and looked away, suddenly feeling very stupid. 

“Morbid, aren’t you?  But not wrong. Yes, I — I consent.  I would like — Merlin. I would like to be part of your relationship very much.  Assuming your caveat isn’t unbearable, like that I have to be nice to your brother all the time or something.”

“Which one?”  Ginny smirked.  “No, no. If Harry wants you to be nice to Ron, he can just  _ tell _ you to be.  He doesn’t need me for  that .”

“I might need you to tell Ron to be nice to Demon,” Harry muttered.

“Just hex him until he behaves,” Ginny advised.  Demon choked, something that sounded like a strangled laugh.

Ginny's replying laugh was not at all strangled or held in.  “This is what you're getting in to, you know. Me and my hexes and being blunt instead of all pureblooded manners and all that dreck.”

“I didn't expect it was going to be tea parties and high finance.  Although if I'm going to be Lord Potter's—”

“When did I become Lord Potter?”

“Probably about a minute before you killed the Dark Lord the first time,” Demon muttered.  “I mean…”

“Later.” Ginny took one of Harry's hands and one of Demon’s.  “Let's seal this with some kisses.”

“Wait, before your caveat?” Demon protested.

“You're really worried about that, aren't you?”  

Demon glared at Ginny.  “Yes. I'm worried about almost everything right now, Miss Weasley. I  am in a tenuous and very weak position in this household and in my life. And you, more than anyone, even Miss Granger or Mr. Weasley, have the opportunity to completely upturn my existence here!”

He had barely raised his voice, but his anger was nevertheless obvious.

“Shit.  Shit, Dra — Demon — shit.” Ginny looked wrecked.  “I was just playing, okay? Harry isn't gonna — he's not going to — to hurt you or treat you badly on my say-so and I'm not going to — to suggest — Merlin's balls, Demon, we're the good guys!”

Demon, surprisingly, did not cringe.  Neither did he sneer, which may have been even more surprising. “The Ministry would say that they are the 'good guys', too, wouldn't they?"

"They would," Ginny agreed slowly.  "Okay. That's fair. I'm going to — can I hug you?"

"You can do anything you — yes.  Yes, I would not mind a hug." He looked perplexed now.  Harry patted his shoulder. 

Ginny hugged him, releasing Harry's hand to do so, pulling Demon up against her chest and patting his hair until Demon made an odd noise, half strangled.  She released him slowly and reclaimed both his hand and Harry's. "Okay. My caveat is just this — that the first time you two have sex, I want to be there.  And I want Harry to be there the first time I have sex with you, Demon."

Harry thought his eyebrows were up in his hairline, but Ginny was looking at Demon, who was blushing yet again, not quite managing to look at Ginny and yet trying to peek at her anyway. "You want to—"

"I want to be there.  I want to watch, and I want Harry to watch us.  Just the first time  _ required _ , but I'd like it if the three of us were in bed together more than once."  She chuckled, glanced at Harry's face, and laughed outright. "What can I say?  I know what I want."

Harry hugged her fiercely.  "I don't suppose you have time now?"  He was joking, and yet he wasn't. 

She punched him in the arm.  He winced. She had a  _ wicked _ punch.   "You don't want to  _ rush _ something like this, do you?"

"No, I don't," he admitted, rubbing his arm.  "And yet — I mean." He huffed as she giggled at him. 

Demon snorted.  "He just wants to know what my amazing skills are like in bed, face it.  And also, how long have you been away, We — Miss Weasley? It's been a couple weeks at least, right?"

"A month," she admitted.  "We're on a pretty good winning streak at the moment.  It's amazing. I mean, we're a good team, I have to admit that, but we've been a  _ really _ good team for this season, and — shit.  Sorry, if you get me going, I pretty much go on about Quidditch like Ron does, except from an insider's point of view."  She ducked her head and grinned shyly. 

"A month."  Demon raised his eyebrows.  "And you're still alive, Potter — sir?  I didn't think you could handle yourself for that long."

"Oi!"  Harry wasn't actually offended, but he huffed anyway.  "I'm fully capable of surviving on my own."

"And besides, it's not like Hermione and Ron actually leave him alone," Ginny cut in.  "We still haven't kissed on the agreement, by the way."

"Oh!"  Demon ducked his head and licked his lips.  "You were serious about that."

"I was.  And you're both okay with the caveat?"

"Of course."  Harry grinned at her.  "I can survive that long.  I'm pretty sure, at least."

"Of course.  You're in charge here, Miss Weasley."  Demon wasn't grinning, but, on the other hand, he  _ was _ smiling. 

"Could you call me Ginny?  I mean, all things considered?  Otherwise I feel like you're grading my Potions work."

"I think I'll be flattered by that. So."  He cleared his throat and glanced at Harry.  "Kisses all around then?"

"First Harry kisses Demon, then I kiss Demon, then Harry and I kiss each other.  It might not be a proper ritual," she added, "but I think it'll do the trick."

Demon laughed, sounding startled — or maybe worried — and glanced at Harry.  "You're sure?"

"I'm sure, Kitten."  Harry leaned in and kissed Demon.  He started with a delicate sort of peck on the lips, but it didn't seem to be enough.  He put his hand on the back of Demon's head and pulled him close, parting his lips with his tongue, tasting him.  

Demon kissed like a man stuck in a desert drank water.  Harry found that it made him just as thirsty, and he pressed his whole body against Demon and drew the kiss out. 

He pulled apart with a sigh because Ginny was there and because she deserved as much, if not twice as much, attention as Demon.  "My lady, I believe it is your turn." His voice hadn't cracked like that since somewhere in fifth year, but he hoped both of his lovely partners  --  _ both of his partners! -- _ would forgive him or, better yet, ignore it. 

Ginny smiled broadly.  "Why yes, it is. Come here, Demon."  She laced her hand into Demon's pale hair and pulled him close, getting a little squeak out of him that, in the interest of fairness, Harry decided to ignore. 

He'd only watched Ginny kiss someone else once before -- a club night, out in the Muggle world, when she had brought a girl back to their table.   _ That _ had been hot.  This was unbelievable.  He shrugged out of his outer robe, finding it far too warm and far too constraining.  He wanted to get Ginny out of hers, Demon out of his. He wanted to fuck them both, right here in the sitting room. Right now. 

Then Ginny was kissing him and Harry thought his head would explode.  He wrapped his arms around her, then snaked out one arm to grab Demon and pull him close, only to find that Ginny had done the same, that Demon was pressed up against them while they kissed. 

He broken from a long kiss to kiss Demon's cheek and found Ginny doing the same, laughed happily and went back to kissing Ginny, and did the same twice more.  On the second time, he noticed that Demon looked a little bit lost, a little overwhelmed - but almost certainly happy. 

The third time, he caught a wince Demon was trying to hide.  Finally, he pulled back. "Shit," he muttered. "Your shoulders?"

"I can handle a lot of pain for this," Demon murmured.  He sounded dazed but happy. "I can. I never thought I would — would have anything like this.  Even before Azkaban..." He trailed off and looked down at the floor. 

"His shoulders?" Ginny murmured.  Harry nodded. 

Gin hugged Demon very carefully, one hand at the base of his back and the other in his hair.  "I'm glad to have you here, Demon. I'm sorry for the way it happened, but I'm glad that you're here."

"I made my mistakes.  I — I deserve punishment.  I'm not arguing that." Demon looked up at her.  "And don't you get all Saint-Potter-like and say I don't.  We both know what I did."

"You were a  _ kid _ ."

"So were you.  So was he, and Granger, and — and your brother.  And Longbottom and even — even Lovegood. And what did the six of you do?  You saved the bloody world."

"Mostly just Wizarding Britain," Ginny demurred.

"And I'm not sure how  _ saved _ it is," Harry added dryly. 

"Look.  No matter how shitty the Ministry is right now — and it is — it is  _ not _ the D —  _ him _ and his flunkies."

"And let's hope that they don't do the same shit or worse in their quest for justice," Harry grumbled. 

"I—"  Ginny muttered as a coin in her pocket vibrated.  "Hermione should have  _ never _ told the Captain how to make these.  Merlin's Beard, I just wanted an hour alone with you two—"

Harry hugged her tightly.  "It will be okay. You'll be on break soon, and then we can spend every waking and sleeping moment together.  You'll get sick of me soon enough."

"You always say that, and yet I am never sick of you when I leave.  Maybe I ought to take a sabbatical..."

"Go."  He squeezed her ass gently and gave her a long and tender kiss.   She pulled back, kissed his forehead, and gave Demon his own slow, gentle kiss. 

"I'll be back as soon as I can."

"We'll be here, waiting for you."

Another round of kisses had the coin in her pocket buzzing like angry hornets.  A third round had it jangling like store bells  _ and _ glowing.  Finally, cussing in ways that would make Molly Weasley blanch, Ginny headed back through the Floo. 

"Well."  Harry found he was smiling stupidly and, what was more, he didn't mind at all.  "That was..."

"Amazing," Demon breathed.  "The word you are looking for is amazing."

"Yes," Harry couldn't help but tease, "you were."  Feeling particularly brave, he leaned in and kissed his Demon. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again my friends!
> 
> I am still trying this something for the first week of May.  
> For any fanfic of mine on which I am the sole creator,   
> for every substantive comment I receive, I will open that doc and write 200-300 more words of that fic.   
> Once I get a chapter written (or in some cases, a sequel), I’ll post it.
> 
> For this ‘fic, that’s about 2500 words or 10 comments.


	14. The Language of Money

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Money talks. Demon knows the language.

Harry lost track of time, kissing.  He may have lost track of the day, too, except that Demon, caught up in the kissing, or at least seeming to be, as much as Harry was, finally made a little noise of pain as he leaned the wrong way. 

Harry pulled back slowly and stroked Demon's hair.  "We need to get you to a healer. There's no reason for you to be in pain, but my healing charms are pretty much limited to basics."

"Wasn't a basic you threw at me in the tub," Demon muttered. "No, but it's also not in-depth.  You've got a bunch of damage, and probably more, unless I miss my guess, that you're hiding."

Demon flinched.  "I'm gonna be fine, okay?  Those potions that Madam Malkin gave you, that'll do it."

"No, it won't.  That'll help with the weight you need to gain and the general, uh, malaise--"

"Big word, Potter."

The sneering was almost as good as a barometer.  Harry reached to grab Demon's shoulders, stopped himself, and grabbed the man's hips instead.  

"Why don't you want to go to a healer?"

Demon looked away.  "I just don't, all right?"

"Well, you either tell me or I carry you over my shoulder through the Floo, so--"

He felt a little shitty, threatening Demon, but on the other hand, he  _ really _ wanted the man to get healed.  He was  _ responsible _ for him!"

"Look.  Look, St. Mungos, they have a wing for people like me.  And it's, it's not like the rest, okay? I don't want to go back there.  I'll do -- I'll literally do anything if you don't make me go there."

Harry found his face hardening.  "Stay here." He dug in a pile of things until he found a muggle notebook and a pen. "Okay, what have we come up with so far?"

"What?  What are you even talking about?"

"Right.  So. Uh."  He dug a bit more.  "Here, sit down, I want you to write down everything they told you about the collar and the bond and what it did.  And I'm going to write down everything else and-"

"Who are you and where do you have Harry Potter hidden?"

"It's Hermione, okay?  And all this research we've been doing.  Okay, your Dark Mark, and what happened there.  And then, what did Ollivander call it...?"

_ "Mens tenetur." _  Demon didn't look up from the page.  "This -- quill? Is strange."

"There's proper wizarding quills in the desk."  He gestured casually. "You don't have to write on any specific thing, I just want to have the facts all down.  And then there's this wing of St. Mungo's.... and the way that they told you it was forever, which was definitely not what they told me or Hermione.  Okay. Shit, you're going to be at that for a bit, aren't you?"

"It's only... nine or ten lines," Demon offered weakly.  "But if I'm writing, you're not making me to go a healer."

"Making you... oh, Merlin's balls."  Harry sighed. "Come on. I am going to hold your hand and be right with you the entire time, and nobody is going to do  _ anything _ to you that you don't want, understand?  I know it's early days and you don't really have any reason to trust me, but I'm going to  _ protect _ you, and in this case if that means from your healer, well, I'll call in Hermione and Ron if I have to and we'll mess the joint up."

"Did you just say 'mess the joint up?'"

"Well.. yes. "  Harry found himself grinning.  "Didn't you ever see what we did to Gringott's?  I've been having to work really hard to get them to forgive that.  They still won't allow me in without a signed waiver and an oath sworn on my wand."

"You're serious."  Demon stared at him.  "You managed to-"

Harry's smile went away and he ducked his head.  "Well, uh. To be fair, we were stealing a horcrux from your a - from Bellatrix LaStrange's vault.  And we rather accidentally rescued a dragon while we were there. I'd, uh, I'd put on your list 'try to get me back in the Goblins' good graces,' but I don't really believe in giving impossible tasks to anyone."  He made a face. "I had enough of that for a lifetime."

"So uh, when you said you weren't rich--"

"I meant... I have no idea, because the goblins don't want to do anything for me that they don't have to."

Demon looked faintly nauseated. "Right."  He turned over the piece of paper he'd been writing on and started a small list.  "I can work with that. So we have the dollhouse in the attic and getting the house to listen to you, we have being your social secretary.  And we have Gringott's. Anything else?"

"No, I don't think - Percy."

"Per-- the middle kid of the Weaslys?"

"That's him.  He got in a huge row with his family and they're, uh, they're really not sorting it out well."

Demon stared at him.  "You want me to sort out a Weasley family tiff."

"Well, I want  _ me _ to, but I could use some help.  If you manage to do it without me, I'll buy you a house.  Somehow."

"Don't make promises your vault can't cover.  Or you can't cover since you can't get into your vault.  Bloody tits of an ancient hag, Potter, can't I just scrub floors?"

"Your mother would hex me into the next millennium and you know it.   You don't have to do it all fast or anything. But we  _ do _ have to go get you looked at.  Please."

"...You had to say please, didn't you?"  Demon sighed. "Fine, fine, but put your robe back on.  You can't show up in your pants and undershirt. It'll look like I mugged you for your clothes and made you come here or something otherwise ridiculous."

Harry smiled.  "All right." He shook out the robes and muttered a freshening charm at them before sliding them back on.  He held out his arm to Demon. "Shall we?"

"It's not a bloody ball."  Demon took his arm anyway, holding on tighter than was strictly needed.  "You won't let go"

"I won't leave you alone there.  At all." Harry threw the powder into the Floo.  "St. Mungos!"

~*~

The reception nurse glanced at them, looked back to her paperwork, and then looked up again.  "Harry Potter? Hello! Is everything all right with you? Do you need a mediwitch?"

Harry managed not to make a face.   _ Demon needs this _ .  "I do.  I need someone to see to some long-term injuries on Demon here, a member of my household."

The nurse looked over Demon, her shoulders and chin dropping. "I see.  Well, the probation-slave ward is two floors down."

_ Down _ ?  He hadn't even known there  _ were _ subterranean floors.  Harry made a note to mark  _ that _ , too, on his paper of things to deal with.  

More important at the moment was the way Demon was tensing. 

"No."  Harry firmed his posture like he was going into combat, but put on his best smile.  "No, let's have Demon treated where you'd treat me for similar injuries. After all, he's part of my household.  Shouldn't we treat him like me?"

"I don't think -- I don't think that's what it means to have him in your household," the Welcome Witch stammered. 

"Well, I do," Harry countered.  He needed Ron and Hermione here, or better yet, Neville and Luna. He was  _ rubbish _ with this sort of thing. 

Demon cleared his throat.  "Sir, let's go. They clearly aren't interested in having a Potter Ward of war injuries, are they?  I'm sure they like the little ward they put together and would rather stay as a spell-damage and creature hospital and let the Saint Potter Hospital handle the  _ real _ cases."

Harry blinked, but he had not survived Voldemort without learning something about thinking on his feet.  "I don't know, Demon. I mean, yeah, I think it's the better idea, but you know how the Wizarding World is about tradition, and going to St. Mungo's is  _ traditional _ .  People have been going here for generations."

"Sometimes they wait for generations, too," Demon countered.  "A modern hospital is needed in the new world. And if we did it properly, we could even help muggles without breaking the Statute of Secrecy."

Harry found himself getting intrigued despite knowing that it was a game for the now-concerned-looking Welcome Witch.

"You know, Hermione would really enjoy that.  She's been talking about--"

"Let me get the Assistant Director," the Welcome Witch cut in.  "I'm sure that she will have something to say about this and can explain why your --  _ Demon _ \-- needs to go to the Probation-slave ward."

"I guess we can wait for a minute or two," Harry allowed. 

The Welcome Witch disapparated so quickly she left a small cloud of flying papers behind her. 

He smiled at Demon.  He didn't want to say too much --  _ constant vigilance _ , as Moody would have said -- but he winked.  

Demon smiled wanly back at him.  "I'm good at some things," he murmured very quietly. "Throwing around someone else's weight is one of them."

"Would have to be someone else's."  Harry patted Demon's back. "You don't have any of your own to speak of."

He snorted, just as a woman in a very expensive set of robes came bustling out.  "Mr. Potter! I hear you wanted to talk to me. This way, please, up to my office!"

"Of course."  Harry followed her, bringing Demon along with him, his arm around Demon's waist so there could be no misunderstanding. 

The woman cleared her throat. "Ah, I was thinking just the two of us could meet-?"

"Demon's my accountant and social secretary.  He'll need to be here for anything we talk about."  Harry smiled his best cheerful-Boy-Who-Lived smile, the one that was a little vacant. 

The woman cleared her throat again.  Harry resisted the urge to offer her a lozenge.  "Accountant, mmm? Well then, this way." 

The lifts in St. Mungo's were far less stressful than those in the Ministry.  Possibly because they were in a hospital. They went up two floors before the back of the lift opened into an area Harry had never seen before. 

"Right here is my office.  Ah, yes. I am Crescent Ferlet."  She bowed shallowly. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Potter.  Here is my office. Can I get you something to drink?"

Harry was about to say no, but something in Demon's eyes changed his mind. "Tea, please.  For both of us."

"For- yes, of course.  Now."

She bustled them into her office, a very expensive-looking place with a window that somehow overlooked the Thames.  There were two chairs in front of her wide, dark desk; she transfigured one of them with a wave of her want into something wider and more plush looking.  "Please, Mr. Potter. Sit, sit. Now," she turned to her tea service and began pouring. "What seems to be the issue?"

"I was hoping you could tell me."  He tried to sound naive; from the roll of Demon's eyes, he either pulled it off or failed spectacularly.  "I just want to get Demon here - my probation-slave and a member of House Potter - healed. He's been suffering from some shoulder pain, and I wouldn't want anyone to say that he'd been mistreated."

The last bit he was particularly proud of.  He even leaned forward a little bit as he was saying it.

Crescent Ferlet leaned forward as well, all sincerity and wide eyes.  "I'm sure you'd never abuse anyone in your care, Mr. Potter. You're much too good for that.  Now, we have a ward specifically for the probation-slaves-"

"But why can't he be seen by the same people who see me?  That way there's only one set of healers involved, and we don't have to go up and down the stairs."

"Well.  You see.  The policy  _ is _ that the probation-slaves aren't seen on the same floor as the - ah - the  _ other _ patients.  We wouldn't want to - ahem."

"Well," Demon offered smoothly, "I'm sure Lord Potter would be fine with going up and down a couple sets of stairs if the mediwitch to see him and I was willing to, as well.  Or, if that fails, perhaps we could talk about some sort of private ward for the heroes of the war effort?"

There wasn't  _ room _ for - Harry stopped himself, because expansion charms made everything easier.  He smiled proudly at Demon as if he was speaking exactly Harry's mind. 

"Well, ah.  If the probation-slave facilities are dissatisfying-"

"They are," Harry interrupted.  "They absolutely are."

"Then I suppose, perhaps, I can work something out.  Now, about-"

"Brilliant."  Harry stood up and offered Demon his hand.  "Where should we meet the mediwitch?"


	15. Zamia adclaro

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An ally, perhaps?

Demon was still shaking as they waited in the nice posh waiting room, the one Harry remembered from after the war.  Harry put an arm around his shoulders and pulled him in close against his chest. "Hey," he murmured into the pale hair.  "Would Saint Potter let you get hurt?"

Demon snorted.  "Only for the greater — no.  Saint Potter lets  _ himself _ get hurt for the greater good, doesn't he?"

"Well, to be fair," Harry allowed, "I suppose I let Ron and Hermione get hurt, but they wouldn't  _ not _ follow me around. But I didn't have as much power then — even," he dropped his voice to a whisper "—-if some of my power now is created by you waving my power around."

"Entirely self-serving.  My shoulders hurt and you won't let it go, I know that, and I will not be put through their torture chamber again."

Harry tensed.  "Demon — how bad  _ was _ it?"

"Later, okay, Potter?  I'm having a hard enough time not running for the door here as it is."

Harry slid his hand down Demon's arm, uncertain where the idea had come from, and looped one finger in the golden shackle there.  "I've got you," he murmured. "I'm not going to let you get hurt."

The Mediwitch chose that moment to open the door. "Ah, Mr. Potter, I hear you have a patient for me."

"Mediwitch Larch!"  Harry broke into a grin.  "I'm glad to see you!"

The woman who had treated Harry and run triage on most of the post-Battle of Hogwarts crew was a tallish woman with hair and skin that befit a Weasley and a body nearly as athletic as Gin's.  She had the longest-fingered hands of anyone he'd ever seen and, for a brief period after the war, when they had still been hunting down rogue Death Eaters and he'd been spending more time than anyone liked under the care of a mediwitch in between, he'd had a very hard crush on the woman. 

"When they told me Mr. Potter was making trouble, I had to come see what you were doing."  She looked at Demon and her eyes narrowed. "And I see. Who is this, then?"

Demon had stiffened, but Harry was undaunted.  She didn't sound angry. She might sound that way to other people, but Myrtle Larch angry was an entirely different sight. 

"Mediwitch Larch, may I present Demon of House Potter.  Demon, this is my favorite Mediwitch in the world, and I've met a few."

Demon bowed from a seated position.  "It is a pleasure to meet you, Madam Larch.  Thank you for keeping Lord Potter in one piece."

“I do what I can, I do what I can.  Now, let's see. Assistant Director Ferlet tells me there's some sort of problem with Demon here, but the way she phrased it made me wonder exactly what was going on."

Harry cleared his throat.  "The Welcome Witch wanted Demon to be seen in the probation-slaves' ward.  I promised Demon he wouldn't have to go down there if he didn't want to."

"And I don't blame him for not wanting to."  Larch pulled a face. "I don't know what they're doing down there but I wouldn't call it medicine, not by any book I learned by."

"That's a bit, uh.  That's concerning," Harry admitted.  "Demon—?"

"I'll put it on the list to talk to Granger about when we get home."  Demon looked like he was amused enough at that to perk up a bit. "Maybe you can, uh.  Borrow someone else's slave to go look at it though?"

"I told you that you wouldn't have to go down there and you won't," Harry told him firmly.  "Madam Larch, Demon has — Demon?"

"Oh, ah."  Demon cleared his throat.  "My shoulders hurt and there's a bit of a, something? about my left hip, I suppose, and—"

"Can you loosen your robes and strip to the waist for me?  If you'd rather not, I can work with sliding a hand inside the back of your robes if you unbutton the top three buttons."

There was a reason Harry liked Madam Larch.  He beamed in her direction at that consideration. 

"I can take off my top," Demon grumbled, and did just that.  

"I've got replenishment potions," Harry hurried to say, "but it's only been — less than a day."

"Easy, Mr. Potter, I know you wouldn't starve anyone — except maybe yourself.  And I know that's not intentional. Although I'm going to make you take your shirt off before you leave, too."

Harry knew better to complain that Demon got asked but Harry would be  _ made to _ , because Harry knew he could say no to Madam Larch at any moment and the worst that would happen was that she'd purse her lips. 

"All right, let's see.  Oh, good, you used the bubble bath potion.  You should really patent that and sell it, you know.  It's an amazing thing."

"I know it's good—" Harry offered shyly.  "But we've really been working on—"

"You're friends with George Weasley?  He can help you through the basics. Your fortune won't last your descendants forever, Mr. Potter.  Patent this and I will be buying it off of you in tubs."

"All right, all right.  Demon?"

"How many Weasleys do you want me to talk to?" Demon muttered.  "I'll make a note of it when we get home. She's right, though," he added, almost idly.  "My shoulder feels loads better than it did yesterday."

"You have swelling here and what looks like bruising, as well as — hrmnf.  I'm going to have to do a whole diagnostic. Demon, can you tell me what happened to you?"

"Restraints," Demon began, his voice suddenly flat.  "My arms over my head. Sometimes they'd kick my legs out from under me.  They shaved me. My hair doesn't like to stay short, and then they punished me for the accidental magic.  The probation-slave thing, the collar they put on to get me used to it while I was waiting for someone to buy me.  It was like  _ crucio _ , less painful but longer lasting.  And someone stomped on three of my toes when they thought I was trying to run away.  I forget the rest."

He managed to sound a little bored, but Harry could see the pain he was trying to hide.  Healer Larch clucked. 

"That place is barbaric.  We ought to do away with it."

"Some of it was downstairs," Demon muttered fractiously. 

"Then they should do away with  _ that _ too."

Her tone made Harry think of the fake project Demon had been discussing downstairs. 

"You know, Madam Larch, I have a question for you — a proposition—" Harry began.

"You're both too young and too pure-blooded for me, young man," the woman smiled, "but it's nice of you to ask.

Demon sputtered.  _ Harry _ sputtered. He wasn't sure that he could breathe, but he tried his best.  "no, no. No. I was thinking — you have some interest in Muggle medicine, right?"

"I studied both Muggle medicine and wizarding medi-witching, yes.  They have some very interesting tools, and while their healing is far behind ours, their knowledge of the human body is amazing."

Harry caught a look from Demon and cleared his throat. "I'm sorry.  I'm taking your attention away from your patient. We can talk about that later.  Sorry, Demon."

"It's not a problem."  Demon shifting, looking like not only was it not a problem, but he'd be fine if they didn't talk about him at all.

Madam Larch's smile was sympathetic.  "All right. Tell me where it hurts." She did a long diagnostic spell that seemed to consist of several throbbing lights, but twice Demon muttered "ow" as the light went over a place.

"Easy, easy.  Thank you, Demon.  Okay, any more pain?"

He shook his head, his jaw set.  Harry found himself reaching for Demon's hand over and over again before pulling back.  He didn't want to hurt anything. He didn't want to get in the way of anything. 

"Mid-thigh is safe," Madam Larch told him gently.  "Just be ready to move if I need to be where you are.  It's good to see that you two get along."

"Do— Do many of your," Demon faltered.  "Not get along?" He seemed to have decided that, lacking a word he liked, he's just skip it. 

“Well, with the whole probation-slave ward downstairs, I don’t see many,” she admitted.  “But I’ves seen some in Diagon Alley and a few other wizarding places, and while some of them seem civil together, that’s the best I can say.”

“Are they all — are they all like me?”

If Harry had to hazard a guess, he’d say that Demon was asking about these things to distract him from what the medi-witch was doing, or perhaps distract her.   Her wand continued to cglow in a series of different colors, up and down, red and green and a sickly pinkish-orange. He kept his hand squeezed gently on Demon’s thigh and didn’t interrupt. 

“Like you?”  She eyed him assessingly.  “I would hazard to say that nobody is like you, Demon of House Potter. But if you mean, are they the children of Death Eaters, for the most part, yes.  Some of them are the spouses of Death Eaters. Some have the Mark but got it under duress. All right. Are you comfortable lying down on your stomach?”

“I can do that.” He shifted slowly and carefully until he was face-down on the bed.  Harry put his hand bon Demon’s thigh, down near the knee. 

“There you go.  All right. There’s going to be some interesting noises and you may feel a few strange sensations. I want you to let me know right quick if it hurts, understand?”

“Understand,” he grunted softly. Harry wanted to cuddle him, but settled instead for squeezing his thigh gently. 

The Medi-Witch went through a series of spells.  Harry watched the wand movements and listened to the words, but more than half of them were new to him.  

Demon grunted wordlessly a couple times, squirmed a little, and didn’t cry out at all.  When Madam Larch put her wand down, he flopped his face on the bed. “That feels… amazing.”

“I want to see you back in two weeks, and in that period, I want you to eat four meals a day and take light walks.  Start with ten or fifteen minutes or work up. After you’ve done that for a week, you can attempt flying for a little light ariel exercise.  Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you, Mr. Potter?”

“Yes, ma’am.  Feed him and take him for walks.  Don’t let him strain himself,” Harry summarized.  

“And you want to feed yourself up, too.  Here, let me take a look at you.”

“I feel fine,” he protested.

“That’s because your idea of normal is  _ wrong _ .  Take your top off, Mr. Potter.”

"I —"

"Oi," Demon complained.  "You don't have to talk like that to Lord Potter."

"The problem is, Demon," Madam Larch continued in a completely different tone, far more gently, "if I don't, he doesn't listen."

"... I suppose Potter is a bit thickheaded," Demon conceded. 

"Oi!"

"What Mr. Potter has is a completely out-of-skew sense of pain and hunger.  That is, if he's not unconscious from either, he forgets that it may be a problem." 

Demon looked a little surprised but nodded slowly.  

"All right, let me see here, Harry.  _ Zamia adclaro maior!"   _ She waved her wand in five increasing cup-shapes over Harry's body, from the temples to the hips.  "Hrrmmm."

Harry could see the lights her wand produced as if through a foggy glass.  "Hrrm?" he repeated. That was a new one.

"You need the same things your Demon does, but in less intense measure.  You need exercise, you need sunlight, and you need more nutrition. You're never going to be tall, I'm afraid-"

"Stunted," Demon muttered.  Harry didn't complain; it was his word, after all.  

"-but you're doing well when you remember to take care of yourself. Two weeks, Mr. Potter.  Find something you can do that just stretches your physical muscles, and  _ get some sunlight. _  Take your Demon for a little walk on the way home," she added.  "There's a good apparition point an easy ten minute walk down the street, that way," she gestured.  "In the little park there. Go on with both of you."

She shooed them out the door like they were children.  Harry, smiling, caught Demon's hand. 

"You heard the woman.  Let's take a walk."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Made this one up - Zamia is either a pinecone or "loss, damage," depending on if you ask the Greeks or Latin-speakers. Adclaro means "make clear, make known."
> 
> So "make known the damage." 
> 
> Here, it's a whole-body diagnostic spell used with a gesture like tracing a pinecone over the body, used:  
> * as a check-up  
> * when one wants the patient to see what is going on, or someone like a patient's parent  
> * As a first step before moving on to targeted diagnostic spells.


	16. Rest and Relaxation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Which Harry and Demon take a walk and discuss genetics, politics, and hair dye.

"Come on, Demon, it's time for your walk."  Three days had passed, and Harry had found that, if anything, their list of to-do projects and things to look into kept getting longer, not shorter.

"Potter, do you have any idea what you have in this library?"  Demon poked his head out from one of the many strange nooks in the Black Family Library.  "I mean - _any_ idea at all?"

"I've read about...  seven of the books," Harry admitted, "read the spines of three or four times that, and Hermione has yelled at me a couple times.  That's nothing compared to the boxes and crates in the attics."

"Attics, oh, yes!"  Demon almost bounced.  "How many do you have?  And we're supposed to go get that dollhouse."

The last three days had been busy.  Demon had taken two field trips - the first escorted by Harry, the second on his own - to get supplies for the missions Harry had him working on.  They had performed the ritual to center three rooms to Harry, one for each day, and the house already looked a little cleaner and happier when they came in.  Harry had been making Demon drink his replenishing potions and eat four times a day, and had been doing the same, if for no other reason than to set a good example.

And every night, Demon had been cuddling next to Harry in his bed, pressed against him like he was cold and needed the warmth.

Harry was going to miss him if he started sleeping in his own bed again, and he knew it.  The little minx made his sleeping easier. He had a feeling he made Demon's sleeping easier, too.

Demon already had a bit less of a damaged, fragile look, although that could have also been the healing. He could lift his hands over his head without pain anymore.  He moved around - as long as it was just the two of them - less like he expected to be told to stop or to be hit at any moment. And he'd even started giving back a little bit of sass to Ron when he and Hermione were around, which had been twice more since the visit to St. Mungos.

(Demon and Hermione had spent an hour drafting the pretend hospital.  Harry was really hoping Demon found some money somewhere in Gringotts, because he'd heard them mention two new schools, too, and Harry didn't make that sort of money.  He didn't make _any_ sort of money, at least until Demon's work with George on that first patent started paying out for him and Hermione -- if it ever did.)

"Let's go look in the attics, then, Potter. I can't wait to see what you have up there."

"Walk first."  Harry found it really hard to be firm with Demon when he was like this.  "I know a private place we can apparate today."

"Yeah?" Demon eyed him uncertainly.  "Not a Muggle place? That park-"

"Not a Muggle place."  The park where Harry had taken Demon two days ago was one of Hermione's favorite in the muggle world, but Demon had been uncomfortable in muggle clothes, uncomfortable with muggle park -- everything -- and uncomfortable with the tame peacocks that wandered the park.  It hadn't been the _worst_ idea in the world, but it had made Harry feel pretty shitty.  "This is a Wizarding place."

"I didn't know you knew that many Wizarding places." Demon stood up and brushed himself off - they had not cleaned nor cleansed the library yet.  "Is this good?"

Harry tossed him a robe, one of the new ones from Madam Malkin.  "Try this. It's a little lighter. It might be nice for being out in the sun."

"Ugh, _sun_.  Potter, I think you're trying to turn me into some sort of working-class-"  Demon stopped, flushed, and looked away.

"Tan is _in_ these days, Demon, haven't you heard? Rich people all over the world are striving to be nearly as brown as me."  Harry pressed the robes on him. "Try them?"

"I suppose, I suppose."

Wizarding Robes were always, Harry thought, going to be all-encompassing, but the new snugger-fitting torso that Demon had suggested - rather like some of Severus Snape's best outfits - made it easier to do a good deal of moving about.  Harry thought, with effort, maybe he could introduce trousers to the younger set of the wizarding world, but he was moving slowly with Demon.

Once Demon was changed, Harry took his hand.  "Hold on." A moment of gut-twisting weirdness later, they were standing by an immense pond.

"Ginny and Luna showed me this place.  It's not technically a public park, but there hasn't been a known heir to the estate in a hundred years, Luna said.  So a few witches and wizards agreed to keep it up -- there's a squib groundskeeper and gamekeeper, and there's a group fund.  I put in a bit," he added shyly. "If there's ever an heir found, I guess they'll have to do something, but-"

"I'm surprised the Ministry or a cadet line hasn't annexed it."  Demon looked around, taking in the willows overlooking the pond, the little self-moving boats, the swimming area on the other side of the pond, the gazebos.

"Well, there may have been some clever paperwork-hiding involved to keep that from happening.  The Ministry, at least." Harry smiled. "Mr. Lovegood told me all about it."

"Harry Potter, the rebel." Draco eyed him sideways.

"The Ministry has gotten claim to way too much and they're not using it for -- well, as far as I can tell, for anything good.  Or as far as Hermione can tell, either," Harry added judiciously. "There ought to be some sign of where all the funds and property go, but we've been able to find nothing."

"Not surprising.  The Ministry soaks up money like a sponge.  My fat -" Demon winced. "Merlin's tits, I've been doing better about that, too."

Harry hugged him one-armed.  "What did Lucius say about it?"

"That the wizarding government existed to indulge whoever had paid it most recently, so it was best to keep up either payments or generous suggestions of payment."

"Like at the hospital the other day."

Demon ducked his head. "You're not mad about  that, are you?"

"Mad?  No, not at all, although I think you may heave given me too good of an idea."  Harry planted a kiss on Demon's forehead. "Come on, let's take a little walk."

"As my master wishes."  Demon executed an elaborate and deep bow.  "This place is beautiful, by the way."

Harry stammered something, still struck by how _beautiful_ Demon saying that, doing that, was.  "I -- careful," he managed, "Or I'm going to bend you over a bench."

"Not without Miss Weasley's permission, you won't." Demon's grin was far too smug.  "You were saying something about a walk, my master?"

"Damnit, Demon-" He shifted, glad he was wearing robes and not trousers this time. “You are a _tease_ , and you’re doing it on purpose!”

“I don’t have any idea what you mean.”  Demon looked almost completely serious, but a faint quirk of his eyebrows gave him away.

“Mmm.  You know,” he murmured, “Gin has a thing for spanking, and I’ve never let her indulge it with me.  Bare-handed smacks across that white ass of yours…”

Demon’s cheeks flushed and he cleared his throat, looking away.  “You’re not discouraging me, master,” he managed, his voice rough.

“Well, now that we’re both worked up.”  He caught up Demon’s right hand in his left and laced their fingers together.  “Let’s take that walk.”

By the time they were a quarter of the way around the lake, both of them had calmed down.  “This is an amazing property,” Demon murmured. “It rivals… It rivals Malfoy Manor, and there aren’t many in the modern era that can say that.  The Greengrasses, a couple others.”

“Why?”  Harry tilted his head.  “I mean, did there used to be more?”

Demon was quiet for a moment.  “It depends on who you ask,” he muttered, looking away.  “Vo— people my — people that are now dead or in Azkaban said that their wealth — land and money and magical items, heirlooms, all of it — were taken by Muggle-borns and _for_ Muggle-borns.  But I haven’t met any Muggle-borns living on old estates or waving around old magical items — unless we count you, and you’re not a Muggle-born, you’re the Heir of two houses.”

“My mother was muggle-born.”

“Well, someone has to be.”  

That was such a strange comment that Harry stopped mid-step to stare at Demon.  Demon, in turn, shifted and looked away, flushing.

“I mean—” He lifted up his hands, then seemed to notice that he was still holding Harry’s hand. He cleared his throat. “Even pure-bloods don’t want to marry their _sister_ . Not to mention, it’s harder and harder for pure-bloods to _have_ enough children even if they did want to go back to The Oldest Ways.” He seemed unaware that he’d started to speak in capitals.  Harry didn't ask, just filed it away in the Things to Ask Later. "So when people really _think_ about it, someone has to marry - well, muggle-borns.  And if you want to really lie to yourself, to say that muggles and Wizards are, I don't know, different species, like donkeys and horses, than you say that the muggle borns must really be from squib lines. but either way, they're bringing fresh blood into your really quite thin pool."  He sighed. "I never did figure out how the Weaslies could have so many children. I mean, they might be -- they might have palled around with muggle-borns a lot, but they and the Prewitts, they're pure-blood lines, same as the Malfoys are. My - Lucius," he grumbled, "used to say that Molly must have a red-headed mailman, which might explain..."  He trailed off, flushing.

Harry snorted.  "Percy and Ron, you mean?  I don't know much about Bill and Charlie but I'm pretty sure they're brilliant, it's just Perce and Ron that don't always fit in, and I think that's, you know, where they are in birth order."

Demon stole a look at him. "You don't think-"

"I'm not offended that Lucius Malfoy thought there must be some reason why two pureblood families managed to have so many kids, no."  Harry shrugged. "And I mean, I figure Ron and Perce are their father's kids, if you really look at them, but I don't know that much about genetics -- the Muggle study of why two people make a certain offspring and things like that.  Hermione knows more than me."

"... Muggles study some interesting things."

"I am willing to bet that a Muggle geneticist would love to get their hands on wizarding genes to see what the difference is.  Maybe we ought to find a squib who could do it --" Harry wrinkled his nose. "The Statute of Secrecy has some serious issues."

"It's meant to protect us, I suppose."  Demon frowned. "I don't know. It feels like some of this discussion ought to be forbidden by this thing," he tugged on his collar, "but nothing is happening."

"We should add it to the list."  Harry snorted. "At this rate, Demon, you and I are going to be doing research together until we're both old and grey."

"Speak for yourself.   _I_ am not going grey.  I will go a snowy and dignified white."

"I am going to go salt-and-pepper, I bet.  I don't know, though." Harry made a face. "My parents obviously, they never got old enough..." He sighed.  "And my Aunt Petunia -- she's my muggle relative who 'raised' me--" He didn't bother to hide the bitterness in his voice.  "--she colors her hair. Do wizards do that?"

"Like, a Nymphadora did?  A sort of Metamorphmagus thing?"

"No, more like, ah.  Like is Professor McGonnigal's hair honestly still red when she's in her eighties at the least?"

"Well, it might be.  Wizards _do_ age slower than Muggles - the magic in our veins keeps us younger.  I see. It's generally done by magic -- either a long-term spell or a potion, sometimes a topically applied one.  But it's frowned on." Demon frowned, possibly in demonstration. "I'm not entirely sure why, to be honest. Perhaps it's a matter that we respect our elders in the wizarding world and Muggles don't?"

"Hrrmph.  Hermione has a word for that."

"I am fairly sure Hermione - ah - Granger - bugger it - Hermione has a word for everything."  Demon's smile was almost fond. "What's this one?"

"Gerontocracy. Oligarchy - which we, I mean, wizards, already are - by the old.  You have to admit it fits."

Demon shot him the strangest look yet he had gotten from the man.  "It doesn't have to."


	17. Simulacrum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't let Demon around books. It's dangerous!

Demon had refused to say anything else at all about the gerontocracy situation and, while Harry could probably have made him tell, that crossed a line he was unwilling to go over.  He cajoled and pleaded, and finally Demon told him "look, we get to the dollhouse, we think about some of Hermione's plans, you tell me about this potion you were working on all of yesterday - _without me_ \- and let me deal with the Gringotts situation and maybe one of your seventeen Weasley situations-"

"Oh, that reminds me.  Fleur's pregnant."

"-eighteen Weasley situations."  Demon had, at that point, pulled out the small notepad and muggle pen (somewhat Muggle: a fountain pen) he'd carried everywhere since Harry had given them to him and wrote a note in his obscure and illegible code.  "And _then_ we'll talk about revamping Wizarding Britain's government.  But you have to promise me you won't start a war in the meantime.  Wars are hell on the young."

He'd said it so _seriously_ that Harry had wondered, for a moment, if Demon had forgotten that _they_ were the young this particular war had been hell on.  Or Harry's parents, the last one.

“I will try,” he had said, as seriously as possible, “not to start any wars.  Although to be fair, I didn’t start the last two.”

“Some people think you did,” Demon had muttered, but he had left it there and Harry hadn’t felt like prying. 

That left them, a day later, dressed in their oldest clothes and heading upstairs and then upstairs again in Grimmauld Place. He hadn’t thought the building _had_ this many floors.  

Demon eyed the stairs spiraling upwards.  “Right. The house is hiding things from you.  When you went up to the attic last time, what did you do?”

“I went up the floor above my bedroom and yours — I was cleaning out, uh.  I was cleaning out Sirius’ things. And I said I should put them in the attic, there’s no op shops in Diagon Alley —”

“Op shop?  No, never mind, later.”  Demon wrote it down.  

“-and,” Harry continued, “the attic door swung down from overhead, like the attic in — in the place I grew up.”

"So it was feeling generous at the moment.  House,” Demon added firmly, “We need to get to the attic.”

The stairs, if anything, seemed to get longer. 

Demon elbowed Harry, who was staring at the stairs spiraling up into a haze.  “Whu— oh! House.” He cleared his throat. “Grimmauld Place. I want to help you.  I want you to be the best house you can be. In order for me to do that, you need to help me.  Attic, please.”

The stairs shortened and unbent to one short run that ended in a trap door overhead. 

“Thank you very much.” He patted the wall of the house — the wallpaper here, in a floor he hadn’t thought existed, was a rather nice blue-and-silver paisley.  It was a rather pretty floor, and looked cleaner than most of the parts of the building he _had_ known about.  "Can we keep this floor?"

"That's a complicated question.  We're going to have to do a lot more work before we get to the point where the house is cooperative enough for decisions like that.  Demon peered at the trap door. "You first."

"Why me first?"  He took out his wand and headed up the stairs mid-complaint. 

"Because _you_ , sir-" The tone on _sir_ was about the most shirty Demon got, which was pretty heavily shirty "-are the former Gryffindor and the Savior of the Known World-"

"Just the Wizarding Britain World, thank you."  Harry turned to smirk at Demon. 

"-and as such," Demon continued as if Harry hadn't spoken, "are clearly better suited for charging into things than I am.  And when you add to that that _you,_ sir, are shorter than I am-"

He trailed off, the way he always did when Harry's height came up. 

Harry pushed the trap door open.  "I know," he muttered. He held the door open with his off hand and cast a wordless Lumos with his wand hand.  "Come on up, there's nothing immediately deadly up here."

"I am _so_ reassured."  Demon sounded like he was rolling his eyes. 

Harry didn't wait for him to make it up the stairs.  He stepped up into the attic, muttering a dusting spell Hermione had taught him.  He'd done it the last time he was here, too -- if this was even the same attic. Grimmauld Place was starting to make him question the way space worked, at least magical space. 

There were stacks of old chests, leather-bound and looking very intimidating, piles of things that looked like vague knicknacks as long as you didn't look too close, old hat boxes labelled things like "hands" and "feet" that he hadn't really looked too closely at, boxes and shelves and piles of books, and, sitting on a very low table, something that looked like a scale model of Grimmauld Place. 

Demon looked between the books, the chests, and the dollhouse, as if he couldn't decide which to look at first. 

Harry took him by the shoulders, and was immediately surprised at a little jump-and-freeze maneuver.  By now, he thought, Demon was pretty comfortable with his presence. But he was stock-still and barely breathing.

"Sir?"  Demon’s voice was thready and broken-sounding. 

Harry moved his hands to his hips, almost his waist.  "Kitten. Demon-kitten..." What did you say when you were just trying to keep your - your - your _boyfriend_ from getting lost in a pile of books?  "I promise you, you can spend as much time in the piles of books as you want -- after we figure out this dollhouse.  Okay?"

That seemed to be the right thing to say.  Demon's snort was a little shaky, but it was _him_.  "With the list of tasks you keep giving me, Potter, we're lucky that wizards are long-lived.  I'm going to need the Philosopher's Stone to get it all done."

"Well, then, when we're very old and grey together, we can sit up here reading books and laughing over when we were young and thought all that other stuff was important."  Harry let himself relax. "Come on, dollhouse. Dollhouse-"

"Simulacrum."  Demon straightened up and moved to the dollhouse - Simulacrum.  "It's a simulacrum, a wizarding model of a place used to preform sympathetic magic in some situations and in others for the place to communicate.  It's the place's voice, it's heart, and it's soul, in some ways. Whoever shoved it up in the attic like this was not doing the house any favors."

"Where should it go, then?  Not where just anyone can reach it, right?  I mean, if it's - sympathetic magic?" Harry frowned.  "Is it like a voodoo doll?"

"I don't know what those are."  Demon frowned. "But you're right.  The secret room off the library should work, as long as you're willing to go in there at least once a month or so."

"Secret room-"

"You didn't know?  That's like the biggest open secret of the Black Houses -- all of them.  There's always a secret room off the library."

"Then it's not going to be very secure, is it?"

"You live in a house that's unplottable and under a Fidelus charm, buried in old-blood protection rites and some interesting new ones, and drowning in wards.  You could probably put it in your sitting room if you didn't mind Weasley - Ron - using it as a coaster."

"Oi."

"Am I wrong?"

"...No.  Hidden room in the library sounds good.  Then what?"

"Then we look it over and figure out what's going on with it and what it wants to tell us.  It might take some time-"

The shutters on the front of the dollhouse fell off. 

"-or it might tell us right away that the care charms on the front of the house have been neglected and we should get to them," Demon concluded.  He examined the area around the windows, peering at it until he muttered a magnifying charm. "Ah. There's a nest of something -- snakes, maybe? -- tucked up in the front siding.  See?" He shifted the magnifying spell towards Harry. 

Tiny immobile black creatures stared back at Harry from the broken shingle. He hissed quietly at them. 

They did not answer.  He didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed.  "Okay. So we need to move some snakes, that's fine. We can figure out what kind they are and give them a better habitat somewhere in the back yard.  What else?"

"Well... I always forget you're a Parselmouth.  It's really creepy, you know."

"I've been told."  Harry snorted cheerfully.  "Hermione's done a lot of research on it, and there's a like, twenty-five percent chance or something that I didn't get it from the horcrux Voldemort put in my - what?"

"Parselmouth."  Demon looked at him.  "Horcrux. Anything else?"

"I'm not a Horcrux anymore!  He killed it. I mean..." Harry sighed.  "No, that's about right. Voldemort killed the horcrux he put in me but there was enough left of _me_ to come back, so I did.  I didn't really _want_ to die or anything, anyway, we just really needed the guy dead."

"I can't argue that."  Demon considered his phrasing.  "Well, that's true, I can't. But I also don't really _want_ to argue it.  I think you're right.  But back up. You. Sacrificed yourself and -- didn't know you might come back?"

"Well... yeah?"  Harry blinked at him.  He'd forgotten how much of the story was limited to a small group of people.  "It was part of the prophecy, or, I mean." He cleared his throat. "It seemed like it had to be done, and that's what everything had been set up for.  So I could face him--"

"And die.  So you, a 7th-year Hogwarts student, could face him and die.  And you - you _did_. You died, were dead, came back?"

"I did.  Saw the train station at the end and everything -- well, I suppose it's supposed to be different for everyone, but my whole life changed at 9-and-three-quarters, so..."

"I always forget you're effectively a muggleborn," Demon muttered.  "Who thought that was a good idea?"

"Dumbledore."

"I - ill of the dead, and all.  Right. So Voldemort killed you, effectively ruining his horcrux -"

" _one_ of them.  Neville killed Naigni, she was the last surviving one.  The diary that possessed Ginny was one." Harry rubbed his face.  "There were a bunch."

"Is he - is he _mad_?"

"Well, you tell me.  You spoke to the man.  I just, you know--" Harry flailed.  "Killed him."

Demon blinked and took a step back.  "You... well. Fuck. You can _say_ that, can't you.  You did. Twice. But with all those horcruxes...."  Demon was pale, paler than he'd been since the first day he'd been here, and looked like he was going to vomit.

Harry wasn't sure he could reassure him. He tried anyway, because - well, what else could he do? Leave it like that.

"We killed a lot of horcruxes.  Seven, when you count - when you count me."  It still felt horrid to say, all these years later.  "He'd dead, Demon. He's dead. I saw him in the afterlife.  What was left of him." Harry patted Demon's shoulder. "He's not coming back."

That seemed to do it..  Demon leaned into the touch.  "You lived through some crazy shit," he muttered. 

"I never had to live through Voldemort living in my _house_ ," Harry countered.  

"Yeah, but... let's talk about something else, can we?"  Demon hadn't moved away; if anything, he was pressed closer to Harry.  "Anything else? Like this house. This Simulacrum with snakes that, thank Mother Magic and all her children, do not answer to Parseltongue, because I think I would -- I don't know.  You're a stressful man to live with, Potter."

"You must be stressed."  Harry kissed Demon's forehead.  "You're calling me Potter again."

"Hrmph.  Make it up to me?"  The look Demon gave him was adorable.  Harry wondered why he'd never seen an expression like that again. 

"Make it up to you?  Hrrm, let's see. Once we get this thing downstairs and in the secret room, you can pick five books from up here and then we'll sit in the sitting room and eat take-out and chocolate all evening while you read."

The smile he got was worth the thought of sitting in one place for that long -- or the hour it would take Demon to get through those books.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two things:  
> First, I keep meaning to do this and failing! That is, leaving a rec for something else at the end of these chapters.
> 
> A fic I am currently enjoying: What Happened to Draco Malfoy by Nimbus_NSFW, here on AO3. 
> 
> Alpha/Omega dynamic, top Harry, recovering-from-abuse Draco. Explicit in parts. Lovely, sometimes painful-in-a-good-way. 
> 
> ~*~
> 
> And! If you want this story to come faster, there is one thing I can suggest (It's one of about 20 current projects, after all...)
> 
> Follow me on Mastodon (See https://joinmastodon.org/); https://tootplanet.space/@aldersprig or, less reliable but easier, on Twitter. @lynthornealder.
> 
> Usually at least once a day, often multiple times, I will post something that says "Tell me what to write..."
> 
> Like thus:  
> Pick my next writing/Project?  
> 💎FF2 - Reconstruction  
> 💎Edally  
> 💎Saving the Cult  
> 💙Blog Post  
> 💙Camp Nano ⏰⏰  
> 💜Hidden Mall  
> 💜Fanfic1 - Harry/Addergoole  
> ❤️Patreon
> 
> This one is "FF2 - Reconstruction."
> 
> Just tweet/toot that at me and I'll write a "blort"* of that next!
> 
> * one blort is about one attention-span of writing, or about 250 words. 
> 
> ALSO
> 
> If someone creates the list for me of everything Demon has in his notebook to-do, I will totally write you an outtake/omake of your choice. I'm rubbish at going through my own work for things like that.


	18. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief interlude of coziness.

The secret room had been very happy to see them. 

Of the sentences Harry'd thought he'd be thinking, that had not ever been close to on the list. 

But the secret room -- Demon had found it with two twists of a candlestick and a pat on the head of a bust of someone he claimed was Merlin -- was  _ beautiful _ in a way that most of Grimmauld Place hadn't really deigned to be, the wood polished and shiny, the books and items well-ordered and some of them seeming to be ready to jump off the shelves and into their hands. 

And, in the center of the room, between a map case and a very comfy-looking and surprisingly-modern loveseat, there was a table with a felt pad big enough for the dollhouse.  The Simulacrum. 

Harry and Demon set it down carefully - it was  _ heavy _ , and it didn't like levitating charms one bit; they seemed to make it even heavier, if anything.  It seemed to arrange itself on the felt with a couple little shifts. 

"It should be facing in exactly the same orientation as Grimmauld Place - yes, there."  Demon smiled. "It probably feels more comfortable here already."

"That's good."  Harry thought it probably was good, at least, and Demon was smiling;  _ that _ was good.  He put an arm around Demon's waist and snugged him in close.  "I'll go get take-out; you go pick out your five books? Then when I get back we can eat."

"You meant it?"  Demon looked up at him.  "Really?"

"Of course I did.  Go on, try not to take all night."  He didn't dare let Demon and Hermione in that pile of books at the same time, he thought with affection. 

An hour later found them snuggled in the sitting room - definitely  _ snuggled,  _ Demon pressed against Harry's side - with a tray of nibble-sized desserts from the good bakery down the street.  Demon had handed Harry a book and suggested he might actually find it interesting -- his actual words were  _ I know you're not really into books but this might catch your interest -- _ and now Harry was deep into a tome on the theories and cores of magic, a notepad to his side, while Demon was reading something that looked like Latin that kept making him chuckle.  

"Oh this part --" He looked up at Harry.  "It's post-Merlin but not by a lot, and it's just  _ gossip _ .  Who was doing what with whom.  There's a Potter there, too, that's funny."  He wrinkled his nose at the book. "Well, a 'Podder', but it's the same name.  I thought the Potters were relatively new as those things went -- not one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight but still holding a seat on the Wizagamot -- but this Podder...  _ She became known such for her work with the pots into which potions could be held, both clay and glass.  Her pots and vials were the only ones known to add to a potion's efficacy. _   Potter - Harry - your family has been innovating in the magical world since the age of Matilda the Weaver!"

Harry didn't want, at the moment, to admit he didn't know who Matilda the Weaver was.  He kissed Demon on the forehead, surprised at the warmth he kept feeling for his former rival --

no, he reminded himself, for his probation-slave, who was a new man, after all.  "So you're saying I have a lot of work to do to live up to the Podder name?" he teased. 

Demon looked like he was going to argue, but a smile crept across his face.  "Yeah, Podder. That's what I'm saying."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This short chapterlet is part one of two, thanks to Zabava's amazing work collating all of the tasks I've given poor Demon to do. 
> 
> On the other hand, it DOES bring up another bit of an action item... oops.


	19. tyfae

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What *is* in the walls of Grimmauld Place?

"All right, so according to Rhine Ironwood's  _ The Creatures of the Dark Places _ , this is probably a relative of the Hydra."  Hermione was sitting on the front stoop of 12 Grimmauld Place with a stack of books and her binoculars, the closest she was willing to get to the creature — creatures? — living behind the shutters in the upstairs window.  "They don't grow to be too big, maybe four inches in diameter per neck, and they like dark, sheltered places with an abundance of magic. They're called  _ tyfae _ .  At least —"

"That matches."  Demon was sitting back-to-back with Hermione, thumbing through another book.  "This is Pictor Black's personal collection of  _ Creatures and Beasties,  _ and - not sure if Pictor was a wizard or a witch; they're from a very long time ago and I only memorized back three centuries — they say that 'tyfae are solitary creatures, of a sort.  When one meets another, they will either fight, mate, or join.'"

"Join?"

"Here, see."  Demon showed him a hand-drawn picture — whoever Pictor Black had been, they'd had a pretty good hand for drawing.  It showed two three-headed tyfae coming together, and then a six-headed tyfae leaving.

"Oh.  Uh. join."  He looked up at Ron, who was on the ladder considering the situation. "Ron, how many heads —?"

"Can't tell, they won't stop moving.  Somewhere between seven and twelve?" Ron called down. 

"There were at least five voices," Harry mused.  "Any eggs?"

"No clue, mate.  Why am I up here and you're not?"

"Because you climbed the ladder.  So — what's their chosen environment?"

The pet store on Diagon Alley had provided four different snake habitats.  They were all supposed to be top-of-the-line, and he'd paid a pretty knut for them.  He wondered what he'd do with the other three when he'd settled this out.  

The image of him having a whole floor dedicated to snakes and, ah, snake-like things popped into his head. 

"The wizarding world needs zoos," he muttered. 

"Zoos?"  Demon looked up; Ron looked down. 

"Ah - Hermione?  It comes from Zoological, right?"

"Zoological Garden," Hermione agreed.  "Honestly, it's no wonder the wizarding world is stuck in the past.  They have no institutions of public learning."

"What do you call Hogwarts?"

"I call it desperately in need of some help and reformation, but that's at least ten years down on my plan, sadly.  Education ought to be more important, but-"

"You have a ten-year plan?"  Demon seemed to have forgotten all about his book.  

"We are  _ wizards."   _ Hermione's grin was brilliant.  "I have a hundred-year plan. Actually, I have five.  They branch. But the primary portion covers a hundred years."

"...I'm going to need a bigger notebook."

"Notebook?"  She was distracted enough to forget the creature-or-creatures in the wall, Ron on the ladder, the book in her lap. 

"Oh, yeah."  He pulled it out of his pocket and showed it to her.  "Things to handle for — for Lord Potter. And for you," he added.

Shyly.  Harry, watching Demon more than he cared about the creatures, noticed that for the first time he had known the man, he really looked  _ shy _ . 

Did Demon have a crush on Hermione?

And if so, what the  _ hell _ was he going to do about that.

Hermione, meanwhile, had lit up.  "Oh, that's brilliant! You'll really get Harry to stay more active if you're doing things, too, you know.  It's a good way to get him to use all that potential of his."

Demon ducked his head, his face turning pink.  "I have to do  _ something _ for him.  I don't like scrubbing floors," he added in a mutter. 

"You know, Pa — P—  _ Penny _ said something similar.  I think it has to be a Slytherin thing.  _ Mopping floors _ is some sort of code, isn’t it?”

"Penny? Oh."  Demon shifted a little and looked away from all of them.  "How —"

"It's hard to tell.  She's really good at hiding what she's feeling, and the Weasley family can be boisterous?  It kind of drowns her out sometimes, I think?" Hermione offered. 

"She talks back to George.  She jokes with him. Not when Mum's around so much; I think she's sort of scared of Mum," Ron offered, "but you can catch them at it when they're at the shop. It's kind of adorable," he added.  "Like... George smiles when he's around her."

Demon wasn't looking at any of them.  He cleared his throat a couple times. 

"Demon.  Kitten."

_ That _ got his attention; possibly unfortunately, it also got Ron and Hermione's attention.  

"Yes, sir?"

_ Yes, sir? _ Ron mouthed. 

"You can visit P— Penny whenever you want to.  I'll set it up with George. Or any of your other fri—"

"They're not my friends.  They — they can't be. They were — they were  _ his _ friends?  But..."

He chewed on his lip and looked the other way.  Harry felt like his heart was twisting in two. 

 "But," Hermione beat him to anything he could have come up to say, "they share knowledge of history with you and common experiences, and you  _ could _ talk to them.  And there's nobody saying you have to —  _ is _ anyone saying you have to let go of everything in your first twenty-two years of life?"

Demon cleared his throat and looked at her.  "It was... it was strongly implied..."

"But you have knowledge which you're using to help Harry, and that's all right, right?"

"I'm doing what he told me to do, and he's  _ rubbish _ at anything involving wizarding soci- I mean..."  He glanced at Harry nervously. 

"Kitten."  He touched the man's cheek lightly.  "I am  _ not _ going to be mad at you for having a go at me, all right?  I  _ am _ rubbish at wizarding world stuff, anyway.  It comes of being raised in a closet and then... raised to be a sacrificial lamb.  Never really had time to think about things like-"

"More like a sacrificial lion, mate," Ron cut in.  

It broke the mood, something Ron was getting better and better at, and they all snorted in laughter until Demon and Ron were equally red in the face and Hermione and Harry were gasping for breath alongside them. 

"Right."  Hermione ran a hand over her hair and huffed.  "Demon, put it on your list. I think it would be good for P- Penny, too.  And Harry, you should be able to talk to them. I'm going to get back to habitats here.  Looks like the third habitat you got will work well if you keep the heat up near the top of its range.  Now you just have to convince it-or-them to move, and then — if they lay eggs, in about a year, you'll have to get another habitat."  She leaned forward and tapped the habitat with her wand. "Did you ever get Kreacher to clean out the basement?"

"Kreacher," he called. 

A second later, the house-elf appeared.  Hermione, although she'd seen Kreacher's new non-clothes before, cooed anyway.  "Master Harry is wanting Kreacher?"

"I am.  Kreacher, do you know of a good place that we could put—"

"A habitat that wants to stay warm, moist, and near a radiant magical source," Hermione filled in.

Kreacher peered at Hermione and then at Harry.  "Master will want to visit the habitat?"

"Well... yes," Harry agreed slowly.  "To check up on the inhabitants. And we may need to feed them."

"Kreacher likes feeding creatures, Master Harry! Kreacher had not had creatures to care for in  _ so long _ ."

"Well."  Ron slid down the ladder with a thump.  "Guess that's sorted. Good on you, Kreacher."

"I," Demon put in, with a very poncy look that Harry was  _ mostly _ sure was faked, "am  _ not _ going to start caring for and feeding demons for you."

"Of course not, Mate," Ron laughed.  "That's just the name to scare everyone else.  Didn't you hear the man? You're going to be minding kittens."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a little bit short, but it had a great ending line there. 
> 
> Today's recommendation: The Long Road, by SinisterMe, here on AO3.  
> I literally got to the last published chapter on this, went back, read it all again, and then went back AGAIN.   
> It's Severus/Lupin, not normally one of my ships, but this is a good enough story I find I don't care. Slavefic, with Severus the surprised and rather unwilling owner of Remus. Heavy on the hurt/comfort as well.


	20. Friendship

"It's going to be fine," Harry said, for what had to be the thirtieth time.  "It's not like you haven't been exchanging owl mail with George for days."

"That's owl mail.  That's not — that's not being here, being a — being a living reminder of — that's  _ Pansy _ not being Pansy anymore!"  Demon ran his hands roughly up and down his arms over his robe.  

Harry caught his hands.  "Ten minutes, okay? If it's horrible, if you're miserable, if you can't stand to be around her, you only have to try for ten minutes, and I'll be in the room if you want, definitely in earshot.  Then you can flee and I'll cover for you. I can be Bad Owner if I have to." He smiled crookedly. "No, Demon, you  _ really _ have to go scrub that floor  _ right now _ ."

He winced, because he sounded a little too much like Aunt Petunia on a bad day.  "...Do you have 'visit my muggle relations' on your list?"

"No."  Demon looked up at him in confused surprise.  "No, was I sup — oh." He cleared his throat. "No, because your muggle family are rubbish, Podder... Lord Potter... and you — I..."

Harry released one of Demon's hands to hug him.  "Okay, you're not wrong. So you 'forgot' to put it on your list?"

"Well, honestly, I thought you were saying it to make Hermione happy, so I didn't... am I in trouble?"

"I wouldn't be hugging you if you were in trouble."  Harry kissed the top of Demon's head. "No. You're not in trouble, but — when you have a moment, I do want it on your list, just to remind me of at some... some time appropriate, okay?"

"Okay."  Demon shook his head against Harry's shoulder.  "I think you're mad, but that's fine."

"Wouldn't be the first time you'd thought I was mad," Harry teased.  "All right, let me see your face." He cast a wandless spell Hermione had taught him, one that cleared up flushed cheeks and reddened eyes.  "Good."  

"Seriously,  _ Sancti Podder _ ?  Is there anything you can't do?"

"Plenty," he answered dryly. 

"And why are we doing this at home again?"

"Because I figured I would limit your exposure to one Weasley at a time as much as — there's the Floo."  He tugged Demon along by the hand he was still holding. 

He hadn't seen George in a while, but as the man stepped out of his Floo, he was glad to see that he looked, if not happy, at least a little less haunted  than he had. He turned to help Pansy — no, not Pansy - out of the Floo before turning back to Harry with a lopsided smile. "Harry! I—" 

The pause was tiny.  Harry wondered for how long he'd expect someone else to fill in the blank.  He tried not to wince and instead stepped forward. 

"George, good to see you.  You're looking... brilliant."

It was a good word, he thought, because George's robe was, for one, probably not a hand-me-down, and for another, it was orange with paisley swirls of neon green. The sleeves were rolled up and he'd belted it around a waist that was too thin — and Harry knew about  _ too thin  _ — probably to keep it out of the way. 

Pansy — the woman formerly known as Pansy — had grown out her hair enough to twist it back in a casual chignon, although she'd kept the fringe framing her face.  She was dressed in a robe that perhaps had too much of George's taste in it, being a slightly darker lime green with orange-and-blue plaid poking out around the edges.  She wasn't smiling, looking at least as nervous as Demon did, but she had color to her cheeks and looked relatively happy. 

George cleared his throat.  "Harry, this is — Polina." In a gesture far too formal for George, he stepped her forward like it was part of a dance.  "Polina, Harry Potter, and—"

"And Demon, of House Potter."  He tugged Demon forward gently.  "There's drinks and snacks in the sitting room," he offered, using his free hand to gesture.  "George, we can—"  

"Yeah, let's see what you've done with the place.  It looks brilliant even just here!"

Demon looked at ... Polina.  She looked at Demon. For a moment, Harry thought they were both going to be too frozen in place. 

Demon stole a look at Harry.  

"It's okay," Harry murmured.  "Send some sparks if you want to get my attention, or just shout, okay?"

"Okay," he muttered, possibly ironically.  He looked back to Polina and, all in a rush, like he was afraid to go slow, he dove at her and hugged her. 

"Right, the house tour."  Harry took George's arm, but he couldn't miss the worried look aimed at Polina.  "Hey, it'll be okay."

"I know, I know," he muttered. "It's just...   I don't really leave her  _ alone _ very often.  I try to, you know, give her a little space, but I'm mostly living at the Burrow, so she is, too, obviously, and then there's my mum and dad, and there's Ron, sometimes, and—"  He shook his head. "So mostly she's with me all the time. It's nothing like..."

Harry nodded in understanding, because he  _ did _ get it, a little bit.  "You and she are getting along then?"  He led George upstairs, planning on showing him the Game Room he and Demon had found and restored.  

"More than... is it..."  He looked back behind him, frowned, and dropped his voice to a whisper.  "Is it even okay? To be  _ more than getting along _ with your, your — your  _ probation slave _ ?"

"Well."  Harry couldn't help but sound a little dry.  "Gin's decided that we're dating ours, mine, Demon, once she's off season from the Harpies, so clearly I'm not going to say it's not okay."

George stared at him for a moment and then snorted.  "You're… you and she with… the great prat of Slytherin!"  He laughed so cheerfully that Harry couldn't even take offense.  "You, and Gin - and - oh, Merlin's beard, Ron must be going spare."

"Ron is — well, mostly ignoring Demon's presence so long as he's civil."  Harry looked hard at George. What was behind the smile? "You're not going to? Go spare, I mean?"

"Well, I  _ hope _ you didn't mean give once-Malfoy a go in a closest," George sniggered.  "No, I'm not going to go spare. Gin's a grownup and more than capable of making her own-choices, and she'd hex me to the next week if I said otherwise."

Harry laughed.  "She probably would, but that doesn't stop Ron.  Even  _ when _ he's getting hexed."

"Well, Ron's closest in age to her, and he has to be big brother to  **_someone._ **   We've  always had — I mean—" George sighed.  "It never really goes away, you know?"

"I know — sort of."  Harry patted George's back.  "It's not the same, I know. But you always had Ron to be older than, too, so you don't have to get it all out of your system with Gin?"

"Pretty much."  George's look of naked gratitude was a little uncomfortable for Harry, but if he could help George at all, he was going to do it.  "I mean, and Percy, too. Percy is just  _ not _ big brother material."

"How's that going, anyway? Perce?"

"It's — It's a bit awkward.  Sometimes Mum loves talking to him and other times she can't stand him, and I haven't figured out if it's the cycles of the moon or something Percy does just with her, but it's — it's tense.  And Dad, Dad still won't talk to him at all. Palla — Polina likes him, though, which I never expected."

"It's... odd," Harry admitted slowly.  "Like by the Ministry trying to pretend they're not people, taking away all of this stuff from them, we're getting to know them  _ as _ people.  I wonder if it's like that with Luna?  Demon's been... really cautious, nervous about meeting with other... you know."  He made a face. "Probation-slaves."

"It's an awful word," George agreed.  "I sort of wish that they'd sugarcoated it somehow just to make it easier to say, but if we have to say it, I guess, well, they have to live it."  He snorted. "So Palla's — Polina's been working with me on Toy Shackles. Don't tell anyone, because we're pretty sure the Ministry will find a way to make them illegal to sell, but I'm hoping to sell out first.  They don't do anything like the ones on the real probation-slaves, just sometimes say things on their own, like 'I love serving tea' and 'I regret my life choices.' They're made out of toffee and nougat, too, coated in sugar, so when you're done playing, you can just eat them."

"Sounds... sticky.  Let me know when they're on the market," he added, a thought occurring to him. "Oh, do they say something about scrubbing floors?"

George laughed. "And how did you guess that one, hrrm?  Mal - Demon, too? Demon's a good name. Wish I'd thought of it."

"Thanks." Harry ducked his head.  "It's because he said house-elves often have a theme, and this one being Kreacher -"

Kreacher appeared.  "Master wishes Kreacher?"

Harry blinked.  "Hello, Kreacher.  I was telling George how much better you've been doing lately."

Kreacher bowed.  "Kreacher enjoys having a good home to serve well.  Kreacher must feed the tyfae now, Master. They complain."

"Of course.  Thank you, Kreacher."

When the house-elf was gone, Harry shook his head.  "We found these tiny hydra things in the siding, and it turns out - turns out the resident house-elf likes taking care of, well, magical creatures.  So now he's caring for those and Hermione and Demon have added  _ magical zoological gardens _ to the list of things they want to do.  At this rate, I'm going to have to come up with more potions."  He headed up the stairs a little further. "Here, by the by, Demon suggested we make you a guest room, in case, uh."

"Because sometimes the Burrow's a bit much," George finished.  "You don't have guest rooms for  _ all _ the Weaslies, do you?  I can just imagine you having to stack us like those Japanese pod-hotels."

_ Harry _ had heard of those — they gave him the willies, far too close to a closet for his tastes —but he was surprised George had, and he was pretty sure it showed on his face.

"Hey, just because our family is pure-blooded and my father can't say  _ telephone _ to save his life," George snorted.  "Pranks exist in the Muggle world too, you know.  Palla's been getting magazines. We've been, uh,  _ surfing the web _ ."

"Good idea."  Harry pushed the door open. "More wizards could do with knowing what's going on in the muggle world, and I don't just say that 'cause I was raised there.  Oh, mind the first board."

He stepped carefully over the  _ second _ board and watched as George missed it and bounced several feet in the air.  

"Woah!"  He bounced again, experimentally.  "Oh, that's wicked!"  

It was good to see George grin again, if only for a moment.  Harry grinned right back at him. 

The room, contrary to expectations — George and Ron were the only Weaslies that had guest rooms, since Ginny had a wardrobe in his room and half the drawers in his bathroom -- was spacious.  Harry had been a little surprised at  _ how _ spacious, but Grimmauld Place was growing happier and happier with them.  

"So how did you do that?  It's not a charm, is it?" George gave a much more experimental bounce on the floor.  "The other boards move a bit too, so it's not a trick board..."

"Want the secret?"  Harry found he was giddy. 

"Well, of course."  George peered at him.  "Ickle Harrikins, I do believe you're having  _ fun _ .  When did  _ that _ happen?  And does my little sister know?"

"Your little sister would bat-bogey hex you for poking into her business, and you know it."  Harry didn't stop grinning. They'd actually consulted with Gin on the colors of the room - a deep umber-hued orange in most places, with touches of both red and gold; it looked like an autumn forest.  "Gin knows.”

“So you said.  And then dating the Malfoy, too…  Harrikins, you continue to surprise and delight me."  George grinned widely at him. "Your boyfriend, mmm? I don't know, though,  a Weasley and a —"

"Parkinson?" he interrupted with a cheerful smile.

"Palla's not a Parkinson anymore.  She's not —" George thumped his hand against his face. "And your Demon isn't a Malfoy anymore."

"I wonder if I could do something for Narcissa?  As the Heir to House Black... Damnit, another thing to ask Demon about, and I don't want to worry him about those things.  His family, that is."

"His former family."  George's expression shifted to solemnity with the rapid shift that he'd always been good at.  "The thing the Ministry is doing--"

They hadn't involved George in their battle plans, as they were, leaving him to deal with his grief and his store.  Now Harry began to wonder if that had been the wrong idea. 

"They've done some pretty bad things.  Have you taken Palla to St. Mungo's?"

"She won't go.  Kicked and scratched, literally.  Told me she'd rather be locked in a box.  Even made a box." George looked as sick as Harry felt.  

"Demon - didn't fight as much, but I learned a bit about it."  Harry huffed quietly. "Maybe Luna can get Goy - formerly-Goyle to go.  I threw a fit and didn't let them see Demon down in their Probation-Slave wing, but -- But I think I have to know."  He felt more and more sick, just thinking about it. 

The way George was looking, he felt the same way.  "Yeah. I think I do, too. Shit. The Ministry is going..."

Neither of them wanted to say  _ dark _ .  Dark had too much baggage. 

"Bad," Harry muttered.  "It's gone bad."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's recommendation is "The Questions We Wonder" by mikimouze16 - this is a "what if" sort of story with a lot of changes from canon.
> 
>   
> **Talk to Me!**  
>  lynthornealder.com  
> tootplanet.space/@aldersprig  
> twitter.com/lynthornealder


	21. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> two probation-slaves have a private moment.

The hug went on longer than any Slytherin would admit to being willing to hug someone else -- the fact that it happened at all was already pressing the bounds of propriety. 

He didn't care, and he took his time about releasing the girl he'd known as Pansy.  And she, in turn, took her time releasing him. 

When she did, she held him by the shoulders to look at him.  "You're looking better than you have in a long time."

Draco -- some part of his mind refused to let go of that name, even though he was, more and more, becoming  _ Demon --  _  snorted.  "Considering how recently I got out of Azkaban, that's saying something."

"It's saying your last years of school were hell."  Her smile was sharp and not at all amused. "That's all right.  I think everyone can agree with that. Almost  _ everyone's _ last years of school were hell.  You look  _ happy _ though, Dr - Demon.  Demon," she repeated. "It suits you."

"Polina."  He looked her up and down. "'P-word?'"

She snorted. "Well, he  _ is _ \-- well, he's a Weasley. And he has a wicked sense of humor.  But ah." She cleared her throat. "When we're along, he calls me Palla."

"I like that more," Demon admitted.  "When-" He shook his head, stopping himself.  "You - look good. Rather like someone stole your fashion sense, but I suppose that's to be forgiven."

"You don't like it?"  She plucked at the hem of the robe.  "I like the colors," she admitted in a very quiet murmur.  "But I'm still working on him on  _ cuts _ .  He's surprisingly old-fashioned in some ways."

"I've been working on Po - on-" Demon stalled.  He ducked his head and tried to remember when he'd had poise and the ability to get through a sentence without faltering. 

"Easy."  Palla patted him on the shoulder.  "Potter, yeah? Can you call him that?"

"I can.  Sometimes I call him Harry," he admitted quietly. 

"Hey, idiot."  She thumped him lightly in the arm.  "Hey, come on. We all know what the  _ Ministry _ wanted us to be treated like."  She twisted up her face in disdain.  "But they made a big mistake with that, at least with me and you.  Probably Greg, too," she added thoughtfully.

"They didn't obliviate away our personalities?"

"Ha.  Urgh, I don't think they can do that, but can you imagine if they could?"  Her face twisted up even more. "I mean -  _ urgh _ . Make everyone exactly how they thought they ought to be?  You can totally see some of the Ministry really liking that, too. "

Demon shuddered. "Yeah.  Yeah, I can. That's awful."

"Luckily, not what I meant.  I meant... they chose good people to own us.  George, Potter -- I figure it's okay if you like him, because he's a decent sort, isn't he?  No matter how horrid we were told he was."

"... Yeah."  Demon studied her face, wondering if this was a trap.  With  _ Pansy _ , back in school, it would have been.  But with  _ Palla _ .... "Yeah.  He's, would you believe it, the Saint Potter stuff is real?  He's like that even in private."

"I believe it.  I mean - I wouldn't have, but I know you... Demon.  I know your tells. I know them better than you know them yourself."

He huffed.  "They're changing," he muttered. 

"They are," she agreed. "But you're happy with him.  Which, considering your options-"

"They said, he said they told him he was the only one they could trust to have me.  Which, considering the aurors told him ' _ make sure you get back your own' _ when they delivered me-"

"Yeah, they told Mo - Mrs - George's mother the same thing, and she nearly chased them out of the house with hexes.  'You can't think anything about this girl will bring back my...'" She trailed off and dropped her voice to a whisper.  "I thought he'd hate me."

"I was certain he was going to hate me," Demon muttered back to her.  "I mean -- why wouldn't he? He's, well, Saint Potter. And I'm --"

He shook his head.  What could he say?

"M - George's mother has trouble with me.  She looks at me sideways sometimes when she thinks I'm not looking.  But the rest of the family just treat me like, I don't know, someone who doesn't have the right color hair.  And George..." She sighed quietly. "I didn't lose anyone."

It wasn't what she'd meant to say, he thought, but Demon was not going to go reading his friend's mind, even if he thought his - his  _ Owner _ \- would let him cast that spell, so all he could do was answer the words she'd said and the assumptions underneath that. 

"I don't know," he told her quietly.  "We lost our selves. We didn't lose anyone to death -- my -- Lucius is in Azkaban, so's -- Lord Parkinson.  None of the families we were part of died," he added quickly, because he didn't want to even  _ think _ about somehow making light of what George was going through. "But -- but."  He sighed. "I don't know what I'm trying to say, except don't sell yourself short.  You've always known--"

"What? That I have the sharpest tongue in Hogwarts?  Fat lot of good  _ that _ does."

"P -  _ my friend.   _ Cousin."  He squeezed her arms.  "Look at me. You have not fallen that far--" He wasn't sure what he was saying, but it swiftly didn't matter anyway, as she cut him off.

"I don't know what you're talking about,  _ cousin.   _ We've lost everything.  Anything we have, literally anything, is because the people who  _ own _ us want to give it to us.  I feel like I've fallen pretty far."

Demon let her go, because she needed to rant. 

"Look at me," she continued, brushing her hands over her robes.  "I don't even pick my own robes anymore! There's no more Famous Designers for me, nothing with just the right magic in it to make me look taller, or paler, or--"  She huffed and wiped her eyes. "There's nothing to me any more but my sharp tongue."

"And George likes it, doesn't he?  And you like him. Look. We've fallen, sure.  Maybe we deserved to fall. We're in a - we're slaves."  He huffed. He hadn't said it out loud in a while. He didn't like the sound of it.  it was a little easier with  _ we _ than with  _ I _ , though.  "We've lost, you're right, everything, even our names.  But - but I think it's okay if we, uh."

He considered what he was saying.  He couldn't remember being this ineloquent before, and he wondered if somehow he'd lost that with the Malfoy name - his poise, his self-possession (ha.  He was someone else's possession now, no wonder it was gone.) He cleared his throat. "I think it's okay if we're happy, and I think it's okay if we miss what we've lost.  And something Hermione - um." She had looked up at him sharply. "-Do you call her Granger, still?"

"Mostly I call her ma'am and go somewhere else fast.  Have you  _ seen _ her when she wants revenge?"

"Hello, she punched me.  Yes. Right. Granger -- Hermoine pointed out that my knowledge didn't go away.  And that my knowledge helps - helps Harry. So that we weren't supposed to, or well, that our own - own - our owners didn't want us to forget everything we'd known."

"Just our names and our fashion sense."

"Well, that's all on George there.  Harry's letting me dress him, even."

Pansy - Palla - considered him, and Demon let her.  His face was far more an open book than it had been before, he knew, but it wasn't like he could keep secrets now, if Harry didn't want him to.

"Knowledge."  She pursed her lips.  "You know, the Ministry hasn't taken Parkinson Estate yet.  They can't. The Blood Wards are too tight."

"My M-"  He wrinkled his nose. "Narcissa is in house arrest at Malfoy Manor.  I don't know what they'll do with it in the long run."

"I'm thinking about the library.  All those diaries, all those old notes..."

"Centuries," Demon agreed.  Grimmauld Place had some of that, but nothing like Malfoy Manor had hidden around the place.  "I'm sure some of it could help George in his business."

"I'm sure some of it..."  She paused and lifted one eyebrow, suddenly the old Pansy again. "...could help your people in their  _ endeavors. _   They won one war, you know."

He rubbed his hands over the golden shackles on his wrists.  "Yeah. Yes. I know."

They'd come to an agreement, then.  He could see it in her nod. There was nothing left to do but hug her and move to talking about more trivial things, like happiness.

Demon had missed talking to someone who actually understood him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's recommendation is "Voluntate" by Yesyasyeah - Draco on probation and in Harry's control ;-)  
> You can now find all my Reconstruction recs here - https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Reconstruction%20Recs
> 
>   
> **Talk to Me!**  
>  lynthornealder.com  
> tootplanet.space/@aldersprig  
> twitter.com/lynthornealder


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